One Love, One Lifetime
by RiannaBenden
Summary: It didn't even matter that he only had one heart beating in his chest. This was what she had crossed universes to get back to, and now they had a chance to build a life together.
1. Chapter 1: Bad Wolf Bay

**Thank you for taking a chance on my story. Just to let you know, this is intended to be a fairly brief glimpse into the life and family built by Rose and 10.5, sort of a long-winded prequel to the larger story that I'm working on. This one will include snapshots of important events in their life, and give me a place to start.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter One: Bad Wolf Bay

"Fat lot of good this is, back of beyond, bloody Norway!" Jackie complained as she stepped out of the TARDIS and looked around. "I'm going to have to find your father," she said over her shoulder to Rose. She muttered something else that Rose didn't quite catch before turning to face the metacrisis Doctor. "I was pregnant, do you remember? Had a baby boy."

He smiled. "Ah, brilliant. What'd you call him?"

Jackie put on her best poker face, wanting to tease him. "Doctor," she said.

The happy smile slid off his face. "Really?" Flattered as he was, he couldn't help but feel sorry for the kid if it was true.

Jackie laughed. "No, you plum. He's called Tony."

Rose was barely listening to any of this as she looked around, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she recognized her surroundings.

"Hold on, this is the parallel universe, right?" She turned to look at the Doctor, her eyes silently begging him to tell her she was wrong.

His eyes were closed off, unreadable, and his expression solemn. "You're back home," he said, before Donna interrupted.

"And the walls of the world are closing again, now that the reality bomb never happens. It's dimensional retro-closure. See, I really get that stuff now," she added proudly, and the metacrisis couldn't help but smile at her. Brilliant Donna Noble.

Rose, however, was not distracted. "No, but, I spent all that time trying to find you, I'm not going back now!" Her voice began to rise as fear bubbled up inside her.

"But you've got to," the Doctor said gently. "Because we saved the universe, but at a cost. And the cost is him."

The other Doctor's head snapped up at these words, and the two identical men locked eyes as the Doctor continued.

"He destroyed the Daleks, he committed genocide. He's too dangerous to be left on his own."

"You made me," the metacrisis protested.

"Exactly. You were born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge." The Doctor's eyes softened as he turned his gaze on Rose. "Remind you of someone?" He paused, letting her think a moment, and her eyes dropped away from his. "That's me, when we first met, and you made me better. Now you can do the same for him."

"But- he's not _you_," Rose protested, her voice cracking. After all of the crap she had gone through to get back to the man she loved, everything she'd been prepared to give up, was he really going to do this to her?

"He needs you," the Doctor replied earnestly. "That's very _me_."

Rose's breath caught at those words, but before she could process what he'd said, Donna broke in.

"But it's better than that, though. Don't you see what he's trying to give you?" Donna asked, and Rose blinked, not understanding. "Tell her, go on," Donna urged both Doctors.

The metacrisis took a deep breath as Rose turned to face him and began to explain. "I look like him, I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything. Except, I've only got one heart."

Rose still didn't understand, her whirling emotions making it difficult for her to wrap her mind around this. "Which mean?"

"I'm part human. Specifically, the aging part," he elaborated. "I'll grow old and never regenerate. I've only got one life, Rose Tyler." The way he said her name, his eyes swimming with emotions she dared not put a name to, made Rose's heart pound in her chest. "I could spend it with you, if you want."

Echoes of an old conversation flashed between them as the both remembered him telling her that while she could spend the rest of her life with him, he couldn't spend the rest of his with her. For a moment, a feeling of smothered longing grew in Rose, as she thought of them spending the rest of _their lives_ together.

"You'll grow old at the same time as me?" she sought to confirm, still stunned by this revelation.

"Together," he quietly confirmed, the intensity of his chocolate-brown eyes holding her gaze and refusing to let her go.

She shook he head slightly in disbelief, and hesitantly reached out and placed one hand on his chest, feeling the steady beating of his single heart beneath her fingers, momentarily transfixed by the feeling. She and the blue-clad Doctor stared into each other's eyes for a long moment, too caught up in their emotions to speak. Just as the intensity of the moment began to be too much for Rose, the first Doctor spoke.

"Oh, and don't forget this," he called, and Rose turned to face him. He was holding an odd chunk of- something. "This universe is in need of defending. Chunk of TARDIS," he declared proudly, tossing it to his counterpart. "Grow your own."

The metacrisis caught it, a bemused expression on his face. "But that takes thousands of years."

The Doctor shrugged. "No, because-"

Donna cut in. "If you shatterfry the plasmic shell and modify the dimensional stabilizer to a foldback harmonic of 36.3, you accelerate the growth by the power of 59!"

The two men shared a look of bewilderment, dawning comprehension, and pride at Donna's brilliance. "We never thought of that," they said in unison.

"The Doctor, in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler," the Doctor said fondly. "Just as it should be."

"But, what about you?" Rose asked quietly, her heart cracking.

"Oh, I'm fine. I've got Madame," he said, but his smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Human with a Timelord brain," Donna said happily. "Perfect combination. We can travel the universe forever, best friends. As equals. And that's just what skinny boy needs, an equal."

Just as she finished speaking, the TARDIS made a warning sound, drawing all attention back to it. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to Rose.

"We've gotta go," he said, a touch of regret in his voice. "This universe is sealing itself off. Forever." He turned and started walking back to the TARDIS.

Rose darted after him. "But it's still not right!" she cried softly, her voice breaking. "'Cause, the Doctor's still _you."_

"And I'm him," he told her gently, nodding at his counterpart.

"All right then," she said. "Both of you, answer me this." She glanced from one Doctor to the other as both came to stand on either side of her, perfect mirror images, even adopting the same pose. She blinked, trying to clear her head, and continued. "When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me?" She turned her gaze on the fully Timelord Doctor and urged, "Go on, say it!"

"I said, 'Rose Tyler,'" he answered, and stopped there, his eyes filling with pain, and swallowed around the lump in his throat.

"Yeah, and how was that sentence gonna end?" she prompted, not letting him off the hook.

"Does it need saying?" he asked quietly, a faint catch in his voice.

Rose stared at him in disbelief for a moment. How could he not think it needed to be said? She slowly turned her head and faced the other Doctor.

"And you, Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?"

The other Doctor's expression was soft as he gently placed a hand on her arm and leaned in to whisper in her ear.

"I love you."

As those words reached her brain, she felt as though an electric shock ran through her entire body. He pulled back slightly, meeting her gaze, and his expression was so open and sincere, and so clearly her Doctor, that she couldn't hold back anymore. She reached out and seized his lapels and hauled him down to her, crashing their lips together in a passionate, searing kiss. Liquid fire shot through her veins as their lips molded together, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, hauling her against his body. Her own arms came up to wrap just as tightly around his neck, her hands tangling in his soft, tousled hair as she'd dreamed of doing, oh, _so _many times. His mouth was hungry against hers as years of pent-up feelings and repressed love finally found release.

A moment later, Rose was jolted back to reality by the sound of the TARDIS door closing. She jerked out of her Doctor's arms with a gasp, and ran a few steps forward, but it was too late. The TARDIS was already dematerializing. She stared in disbelief as the blue box faded from sight, completely unable to comprehend it. '_He didn't even say goodbye,' _she thought, a little desperately.

As the ship disappeared completely, she felt the other Doctor come up beside her. Gently, he took her hand in his, squeezing it slightly, silently telling her that he was still here, and offering his reassurance. Rose gripped his hand tightly, clinging to him like a lifeline.

After a moment, she lifted her eyes from the spot the TARDIS had just vacated and turned to meet the Doctor's eyes. She had no idea what to say, conflicting emotions of hurt, grief, confusion and loss at the Doctor's abrupt departure warring with her relief that _this _Doctor was still here, and her love for him, all complicated by the fact that every nerve in her body was still sizzling from that incredible kiss.

Some of her inner turmoil must have shown in her face, because the Doctor's eyes softened and he smiled a small, tender smile. He reached out with his free hand and brushed a strand of her soft blonde hair away from her face before cupping her cheek in his hand, his thumb gently stroking her cheekbone.

"It'll be alright, Rose," he said gently. "I know you must be feeling overwhelmed right now, but I promise it's going to be alright. I'm not going anywhere."

It was just the sort of reassurance she needed. She lifted her hand and hesitantly reached out to him, slowly stroking the side of his face with a feather-light touch. Their eyes were locked together, and they slowly leaned in towards each other again. Rose paused just before their lips met, wanting him to take that final step this time, and with a soft sigh of her name, he did, lightly touching his lips to hers.

This kiss was different; soft, slow and gentle, the sweet kiss of new lovers who have all of Time. It was just as intense, though, if not more so, and Rose quickly found herself melting into his arms, shaken to the core by the intensity of their shared passion. Her entire awareness narrowed to the feel of his lips on hers, his tongue lightly stroking along hers and exploring the hidden recesses of her mouth, his arms around her and her own fingers threading through his hair again.

The perfect moment shattered when Jackie cleared her throat somewhere behind them, startling them both into breaking apart. Rose turned to face her mother, blushing, but didn't pull away from the Doctor's embrace. He didn't loosen his arms either, keeping them locked around her and refusing to let go, even for a moment.

Jackie glared at them for a few seconds, but when Rose opened her mouth to apologize, her mother waved her into silence.

"Don't bother, I knew this would happen. The way you two would look at each other, even when himself there was all big ears and leather. And after the last three years, with you fightin' so hard to get back to him. Knew that was coming."

The Doctor reached one hand up and tugged slightly on his hair, a bit embarrassed.

"Well," he started, then stopped when he realized there wasn't really anything he could say to that. Instead, he settled for sharing another melting look with Rose. As their eyes met again, matching happy smiles spread across their faces. Their joy was so visible, so contagious, that Jackie couldn't help smiling herself.

"All right, I'm gonna try and call your father," she said, pulling out her phone. "He can send someone to come get us. I don't know about you two, but I've had enough of this beach."

With that, Jackie turned her back on Rose and the Doctor and began dialing, walking away to talk to her husband. The two of them stared awkwardly at each other, both having so much to say that they didn't know where to start. The Doctor still had his arms wrapped around her, so Rose settled for cuddling close to his chest, tucking her head under his chin. He turned his head slightly to press a light kiss against her forehead. A contented smile crossed Rose's lips a she breathed in his familiar scent, feeling his strong arms cradling her and loving every second of it. This was what she'd been craving, what she had crossed dozens of parallels to get back to. It didn't even matter that she felt only one heart beating in his chest against her cheek; he was her Doctor. And this Doctor would never change his face, would not have to watch her wither and die while he still remained young and gorgeous, and would not have to live on alone for centuries without her. Best of all, he wasn't afraid to tell her he loved her. Yes, they had a lot of things to talk about and some issues to work out, but Rose was confident that they could handle anything, as long as they were together. She wasn't exactly sure when she'd come to this realization (probably somewhere in the middle of one of those kisses), but her resolve was unshakable.

Deciding that weighty conversations could wait until they were truly alone, she lifted her head to tell him what she thought her parents were likely to arrange.

"There's this little village about ten miles away; it's not much, but there's a hotel. It's where we stayed, you know, last time." Her voice faltered, and he tightened his grip on her before tilting her head up and kissing her until she was breathless. Again.

"I am _never_ going to let that happen again. You're stuck with me, Rose Tyler," he said, his low voice containing just a hint of a growl as they both remembered the anguish they'd felt at their separation.

Rose couldn't help but smile at his words. "Yeah, well, stuck with you, that's not so bad," she replied, giving her patented tongue-in-teeth smile. He returned his cheekiest grin, making an adorable happy sound in the back of his throat.

"Anyway, Mum will talk to Dad, and he'll make arrangements for a car to come and get us; the road's about a quarter mile that way." She freed one hand to point off to her right. "We'll prob'ly stay tonight in that hotel I mentioned, and Dad's zeppelin should be at the airport tomorrow morning."

So it proved. When Jackie came back over to them a few minutes later, she informed them of this very same plan, and half an hour later they were picked up by a black sedan on the side of the road. Throughout the wait and the ride to the hotel, Rose and the Doctor remained uncharacteristically quiet, clinging tightly to each other's hands the entire time, as if afraid the other would vanish if they let go.

When they arrived at the hotel, Jackie went up to the front desk to pick up their keys, Pete having made all the arrangements, then came back to them, handing one key to the Doctor.

"Rose-"

"I'm stayin' with him," Rose cut her mother off before she could finish her question, knowing exactly what was coming. Her mother had been about to ask if she wanted to stay in her mother's room or the Doctor's, but Rose had no intention of letting her Doctor out of her sight. She was still sort of half afraid that she'd wake up to find that this had all been yet another vivid dream, and they were still separated. As if reading her thoughts (or sharing them, she wasn't sure), he squeezed her hand tightly.

Jackie frowned slightly, but it passed quickly and she shrugged.

"All right then, you two. You just behave yourselves," she said, fixing the Doctor with her most ferocious glare. "I'm nowhere near old enough to be a grandmother."

"Mum!" Rose hissed in outrage, her face burning. A furtive glance at the Doctor's face revealed that he was blushing just as hotly, and tugging awkwardly on his hair with his free hand. Her face flushed even hotter at seeing his reaction, and she deliberately avoided making eye contact with him. Instead, she glared at her mum.

"What? I told you, I seen the way you've always looked at each other, like you're-"

"Mum, just shut up. Please, please, please, just stop talking."

Jackie looked completely unrepentant, but she did change the subject. "Well, are you hungry?"

Rose shook her head. After these past days, she was just exhausted, and her stomach tied up in knots after the emotional roller coaster she'd been put through. All she could think about now was how much she and her Doctor needed to talk, and how there was no way they could do so in front of her mother.

"Neither am I," the Doctor added quietly, and Jackie sighed.

"Well, then I guess I'll just say goodnight." Jackie reached out and hugged her daughter, and Rose returned it as best she could without letting go of the Doctor. Jackie pulled away and turned to head for the hotel's small dining room, then stopped and turned back.

"Are you two really going to grow another TARDIS and take off again?" she asked bluntly.

Rose had been expecting something like this eventually, though not quite so soon. She started to answer her mum's question, then realized she wasn't so sure herself and turned to the Doctor.

"I don't know. Doctor, can we really grow another TARDIS from that little chunk?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the oddly-shaped piece of coral. "Yes, we can," he announced happily. "Thanks to Donna, we can do so in record time." Seeing the look on Jackie's face, he hastened to reassure her, knowing that she must be dreading losing her daughter again so quickly. After all, for a while there she'd thought she was going to lose Rose forever, which was bound to make her a bit clingy. "Mind you, it'll still take a while, something like, oh, eighteen months?"

He mentally congratulated himself on his accurate reading of Jackie when her face instantly relaxed at the mention of eighteen months. She reached out and kissed her daughter's cheek and said goodnight, then resumed her trek to the dining room. When she was gone, the Doctor turned to Rose.

"Shall we?" he offered, sweeping his free hand in the direction of the stairs.

They started off in silence, but halfway up the stairs Rose voiced a question. "Are we really going to be stuck here for a year and a half?" she asked, far less pleased by this idea than her mother.

The Doctor chuckled slightly at the comparison in his head, but nodded. "It'll take about that long for the new TARDIS to grow up. But we will be traveling again soon, Rose. I promise you that."

"Are you going to be all right? I mean, just one planet, one time, for that long… isn't that going to drive you mad?" She was a little afraid of what his answer might be. Traveling and exploring was such a huge part of who he was. How could a day-to-day life, stuck on one planet, ever compare to that, even if it was only temporary? She'd only traveled with him for about two years, and she'd hated being confined, so how much worse would it be for him? What if he got bored with her, now that he couldn't show her all of Time and Space?

His next words brought her frenzied circle of fear and doubt to a screeching halt, and nearly stopped her heart.

"Not as long as I have you."

Rose stopped dead in her tracks, overwhelmed by his simple sentence and the gravity with which it was spoken. Tears stung her eyes and her breath caught in her throat, and she had to fight down a sob as it hit her: _This was actually happening._ She really had the Doctor back, in the same universe, and he was finally expressing the incredible depth of emotion that had always existed between them, from the word "run."

Suddenly, she registered that he had also stopped, and was speaking to her, sounding worried. "Rose? What's wrong, what did I say? Rose?"

Her eyes focused again on his concerned, handsome face, and she smiled, shaking her head. "Nothing's wrong, I'm fine. It's just…" she trailed off, unsure of how to phrase what was going on in her head.

"Just what, Rose? What is it?"

"I- I dreamed of this, you know, for so long. Even before C-Canary Wharf. I'd loved you for so long, and you always held me at arm's length. And then you were gone, and I thought I'd never see you again, and I _still_ dreamed about it. I never stopped. And then we started working on the dimension cannon, and it got worse, and then it started to work, and then I saw you again, and now you're here, and saying these things that I never thought you'd actually say, and it's just- I-" And with that, the tears that had been threatening in Rose's eyes spilled over and she burst into hysterical sobs, the events of the past few days finally getting the better of her.

The Doctor gathered Rose into his arms, cradling her against him as she sobbed into his blue jacket, clinging to him desperately. For a long moment, he just held her, stroking her hair and whispering to her in his gentlest tone, but when a passing guest gave them a nasty glare as he walked by, the Doctor gently urged her to walk onward. Keeping an arm around her, he located their room and opened it, ushering her inside and closing the door behind them. Gently, he guided her to sit down on one of the beds, and sat down beside her, gathering her back into his arms to let her cry herself out. He murmured words of comfort and reassurance into her ears, constantly reminding her that he was there, and that he loved her. Gradually, the force of her tears began to wear itself out, and her sobs slowed and quieted as she drew comfort from his presence.

Unlike her furious bouts of tears the first time she'd stayed in this hotel, crushed by the loss of her beloved Doctor, this session of tears brought peace in its wake. This time, it wasn't about grief, but release. Slowly, she was able to stop crying, and raised her face to look into the Doctor's eyes. He gave her a small, tender smile.

"Feel a little better?" he asked softly, brushing her hair away from her face.

She gave a tiny, watery laugh. "I guess," she said shakily.

His small smile widened. "Except that, now, your head hurts and your nose is all stopped up," he said, and gently disentangled himself from her. He stood and grabbed the tissue box from the dresser and handed it to her, then ducked into the bathroom, coming out a moment later with a glass of water.

"Here," he said, handing it to her. "That should help."

Rose blew her nose and drank the water without taking her eyes off him, and gradually began to get herself under control again. With that control came mild embarrassment that she'd broken down so completely, and she flushed slightly.

"Sorry 'bout that," she muttered.

"Hey," he said, taking her chin in his hand and gently forcing her to look him in the eye. "Don't ever apologize for that. It's been a hell of a day, and it seems like you were long overdue for a bit of a breakdown."

She laughed weakly at that. "Guess I was, yeah. I got so used to holding everything inside, never dealing with it, 'cause I thought I'd break if I let it out for a minute. Plus everyone else seemed to think it was time I moved on, thought I should be 'over it' by now. But I wasn't." She sniffled, and he handed her another tissue. "I never 'got over it,' and it never got any easier, never hurt any less, and I never missed you any less. I got a bit better at hiding it, at finding ways to shut it out or bury myself in my work at Torchwood, but the pain, the nightmares, they never went away."

Tears pricked the Doctor's eyes at her heartrending confession, and he pulled her tightly against his chest, his own breathing ragged as his single heart shattered for his pink and yellow girl. "Oh, Rose," he choked out, rocking her gently in his arms, his lips pressed against her hair. He struggled to find the words to tell her just what she meant to him, but his infamous gob seemed to have deserted him, just as it always had when he tried to open up to her. Finally, he managed a few halting sentences that didn't really properly express how he was feeling, but mostly got his point across.

"That day, losing you… It broke me, Rose. I hated that I hadn't gotten to finish that sentence, that I'd never found the time to tell you how I felt before. Everywhere I went, everything I did, it all reminded me of you, and I missed you constantly, so much it hurt. If it hadn't been for Donna…" he broke off as she tensed in his arms suddenly. "What is it?"

For a moment, Rose couldn't speak as the memories of that parallel world where the Doctor _hadn't _met Donna flashed through her mind. The memory of racing down the street to the UNIT forces, only to be told that the Doctor was dead… That had very nearly killed her on the spot, and only the knowledge that it wasn't supposed to have happened had kept her from falling apart. She forced her lips to move, knowing he deserved an explanation.

"That parallel world, where I met Donna, just before… She'd never met you, and without her, you…" She stopped, unable to say it, but he knew.

"It's okay, I know. Donna told me what she remembered about that world. I know that must have been hell for you, but you fixed it. I'm here, I'm all right."

She held onto him tightly, trying to chase away the unpleasant memories and replace them with the knowledge that he was here, holding her and kissing her forehead.

They stayed like that for a long time, just holding each other close and drawing comfort from each other's presence. It wasn't until the Doctor noticed that it had gotten dark that they moved at all, and even then it was only to turn on a lamp, pull off their shoes and jackets and get more comfortable on the bed, leaning against the pillows with their arms around each other. Rose rested her head on his shoulder, and slowly they began to talk again.

She told him of the time she'd spent in this universe, stumbling over her blurry memories of the first six months or so, when she'd been buried so deep in depression that she barely left her room in the Tyler mansion. It nearly killed him to hear how broken she'd been, and he couldn't hold himself back from kissing her desperately. When they broke apart, she smiled slightly, and went on to tell him of how she'd eventually pulled herself together, outwardly at least, and of her work with Torchwood and the dimension cannon. He had to admit, he was impressed with her accomplishments, and told her so. She merely gave a self-deprecating chuckle and said "I guess anyone can accomplish something if they make it the sole focus of their existence."

He couldn't help giving her a mild glare at that. "Rose Tyler, you are brilliant. Don't ever let me hear you saying otherwise."

After a brief pause, he reciprocated, telling her of his travels with Martha and Donna, from the Racnoss and the Sontarans to Jenny and the mysterious River Song. He told her of the Master and the Year That Never Was, and about Captain Jack and his immortality. When he told her that _Jack Harkness_ was the Face of Boe, she let out an incredulous laugh, nearly identical to the one he'd given when he'd found out. Finally, haltingly, he told her about what the metacrisis was undoubtedly doing to Donna's mind, and what the other Doctor was going to be forced to do in order to save her. They both shed a few bitter tears over that; the Doctor because he still thought of her as a beloved sister, and Rose because in the brief time she'd known Donna, she'd come to respect her and see her as a friend.

They talked late into the night, about all the things they'd never talked about, baring their souls in that little hotel room. They continued until they could both feel their eyelids growing heavy, and they finally gave in to their exhaustion, settling down under the covers. Rose curled up against the Doctor's side, pillowing her head on his chest, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. Cuddled together, they fell into the most peaceful sleep either had had in years, secure in the knowledge that they were no longer alone.

**Thanks for reading, and please review! Be nice, though, this is my first story.**


	2. Chapter 2: New Beginnings

**Thanks so much to everyone who has already read, favorited, or reviewed this story; it means a lot to me!**

**This and the next chapter were originally supposed to be one chapter, but the muse wouldn't shut up and it was starting to get a bit unwieldy, so I split it up. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Two: New Beginnings

The Doctor woke early the next morning, feeling far more rested than he had in years, simply because of the beautiful blond woman who was still sleeping on his chest. He smiled at the sight of her curled up against him, and brushed her hair out of her eyes, placing a light kiss on her forehead. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this happy, this at peace with the world. Even before the Time War, he'd always been running, always restless, never satisfied. Afterwards, he'd been a shell of the man he once was, a broken, battered, lonely soldier. That is, until the day he met a lovely, brilliant and rather jeopardy-friendly young woman in a shop basement in London. From the moment she'd taken his hand, she'd begun to put him back together, and had given him a reason to live. And he had loved her almost from the beginning. After he'd regenerated, it had gotten even stronger, so much so that it scared him. He'd shied away from his feelings, knowing that he would inevitably lose her, even if she stayed with him for the rest of her life. He would have to live on alone.

Except, now he was no longer trapped by the curse of the Timelords. He could give her his forever, could spend the rest of his life with her. He could give her all those things she deserved, both the exotic and the domestic. He waited for the shudder that usually accompanied that word, but to his surprise, he seemed far more comfortable with the idea than he was used to being. He wasn't sure whether that was because of the bit of Donna in him or because of the pink and yellow girl in his arms, but whatever the reason, he was glad. His Rose deserved the chance to have absolutely everything.

His stomach growled, shaking him out of his early-morning introspection. He frowned slightly, realizing that he hadn't eaten in… well, technically, _he_ had never eaten at all. '_Well, isn't that wizard,'_ he thought wryly. He glanced down at Rose, still peacefully asleep, and though he was loath to move her, he decided that he could slip downstairs, grab breakfast for them both, and be back before she woke. He gathered her gently in his arms and shifted her off of his chest, settling her on the pillow beside him. She shuffled slightly, but didn't wake, and he smiled tenderly at her, tucking a lock of her sleep-mussed hair behind her ear and kissing her temple lightly.

"I'll be right back," he whispered softly, and eased himself out of the bed. He quickly pulled on his jacket and trainers, moving quietly so as not to disturb her, and slipped out the door. He headed downstairs in an excellent mood, hoping that he would find bananas at the hotel's breakfast, and that there wouldn't be too many people downstairs so that he could get back to Rose before she woke.

0-0-0-0

Rose slowly drifted into consciousness, the memories of the previous day coming back to her a little at a time. She smiled slightly at her favorites, namely kissing the Doctor and falling asleep in his arms, and reached out to the other side of the bed. When her seeking hand encountered only air and empty sheets, her eyes shot open and she sat bolt upright in bed, her heart hammering. She hurriedly glanced around the room, desperately trying to prevent a panic attack, but he wasn't there.

"Doctor?" she called out, hoping he was just in the bathroom or something. When he didn't reply, she threw the blankets off her legs and got up, padding over to the bathroom door. Which was wide open. "Doctor?" This time her voice was higher, more frantic, and she felt that panic attack coming on strong. Where was he? What if something had happened to him? What if he'd left? What if it had all been a dream, the cruelest dream she'd ever had? What if, what if, what if-

_"Doctor!"_

Her cry tore her throat, and her knees gave way and she collapsed, unable to breathe. She could hear nothing but the blood pounding in her ears, certainly not the footsteps racing down the hall outside the room, or the door bursting open seconds later. She barely even registered the feel of hands gripping her shoulders, until the sound of that beloved voice cut into the maelstrom of her panicked thoughts.

"Rose, what is it, what's wrong? Rose? _Rose! _Answer me!"

She gave a choked, unintelligible cry that might have been the Doctor's name, and flung herself into his arms, clinging desperately and shuddering violently. His arms came up to hold her close within seconds, and he rocked her gently, stroking her hair and murmuring words of comfort into her ears, his own heart racing in his terror that something had happened to her. Gradually, she calmed down some, at least enough to ease her death grip on him, though she didn't let go.

"I- I woke up and you were gone, and I, well, I guess I, sort of, panicked," she finished ruefully, beginning to be ashamed of her violent overreaction. How could she have flown off the handle like that? It was like she was one of those pathetic, simpering, moronic girls in those movies she hated. What was wrong with her?

To his everlasting credit, the Doctor did not laugh at her, just held her closer and kissed her head. "It's okay; I just went downstairs to get some breakfast for us, but I'm back now and I'm not going anywhere. I was hoping to get back before you woke up so you wouldn't miss me. I'm so sorry, Rose; I should have left a note or something."

She gave a shaky little laugh. "S'not your fault, I shouldn't have freaked out like that. Sorry," she said sheepishly.

"It's okay, really, it's understandable given the circumstances. Just, try not to scare me like that again. I just about had a heart attack, and I don't have a spare anymore."

As both of their hearts began to return to normal speeds, Rose lifted her head from his shoulder and drew back. "So, you mentioned something about breakfast?" she asked, her voice determinedly light.

He chuckled slightly and stood up from the floor, offering her a hand up, which she readily took. He crossed to the small table by the door, where he'd dropped his prizes in his rush to get to her. "They didn't have any bananas downstairs, unfortunately, but I did find banana-nut muffins, and it looks like I managed not to spill the tea." He handed her one of the muffins and a to-go cup of tea as he rambled on. "Though, that's likely due to the fact that the cups had lids, but still. Nice hot cup of tea, that's the thing, right?"

Rose smiled slightly, which widened into a huge grin after she sipped her tea. "You remembered how I like my tea!" she exclaimed happily.

He sighed, but smiled. "Oh, Rose, I could never forget a single thing about you." His eyes were warm and soft, and his words and expression made her want to thread her fingers through his gloriously ruffled hair and kiss him senseless. So she did. He was a bit startled at first, but quickly relaxed and returned her kiss, both of them reveling in the fact that could now do this together. They broke apart only when oxygen became an absolute necessity.

"I could get used to that," she said breathlessly as he rested his forehead on hers, both of them breathing hard.

He raised his eyes to hers, and the smoldering look he gave her then made her want to whimper. "Good," he said, his voice nearly an octave lower than she'd ever heard it and sending shivers down her spine. "Because I have no intention of stopping."

She gasped as he captured her lips again.

0-0-0-0

After several long, glorious moments, Rose managed to remind him of their decision from the previous night: To _not_ rush their romantic relationship. (She still had no idea how. How was a girl supposed to focus with _The Doctor _kissing her like that?) He reluctantly pulled away with a low, frustrated groan and placed one more light, chaste kiss to her lips before releasing her, running a hand through his hair.

"Sorry about that. I got a bit carried away," he said sheepishly. "These human hormones make it harder to control myself than before."

"Welcome to the club; I'll get you a T-shirt," she replied with a smirk, then frowned. "Hold on, you said 'harder than before.' Does that mean…"

He sighed. "Yes, Rose Tyler; that means exactly what your filthy little mind is thinking. Honestly, I think you've spent too much time around Captain Jack. Mickey had a point when he called him the 'Captain of the Innuendo Squad.'"

Rose giggled, but was not distracted by his rambling. "So, if you wanted to, well, kiss me before, then how come you never did?" she asked a bit hesitantly.

Instantly, the mood sobered somewhat. He sighed again, tugging on his ear as he struggled to answer her question. This was one of the few things that hadn't come up the night before, but he'd been expecting it, and he knew she deserved a straight answer. "It's a bit stupid, really," he admitted. "It was that 'Curse of the Timelords' thing. I knew I was going to lose you one day, and I thought if I acted on my feelings, let myself love you, that it would just make the pain worse when I had to say goodbye. But after Canary Wharf, I realized that holding myself back had actually made it that much worse, because I also had regrets about the things we never had. I promised myself that if by some miracle I ever got you back, I wouldn't let that stand in our way anymore."

She frowned slightly. "So, if there hadn't been a metacrisis, and there was only one of you, the other Doctor wouldn't have tried to send me back? He would have kept me with him?" she asked. When his face fell, obviously thinking that she was wishing he'd never existed so she could still be with the other Doctor, she hastily continued. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not sorry he did, not anymore. You're the same in all the ways that matter, and I love you, I do. I was just sort of wondering…"

"Wondering if the reason I was willing to love you had more to do with my 'little bit of human' than who I was?"

She winced a little at his phrasing. "More wondering if he didn't think I was good enough for him, and he just felt sorry for me or something."

"No, Rose. He loved you just as much as I do. He gave you up because he thought you'd be better off here, with your family, and a version of him who could grow old with you, and wouldn't regenerate on you. We both knew how hard it was on you when I- he- we- whatever- regenerated the first time, and how upset you were when I almost regenerated again. He just wanted you to be happy, and I think he thought that in the long run you'd be happier with me than you would be with him. Especially once we have the TARDIS again."

"I think he may have been right," she said softly.

At those words, he relaxed muscles he hadn't even realized were tense. Knowing that she didn't consider him to be somehow less than the original meant more to him than he cared to admit. He reached out and hugged her tightly, trying to show her what that sentence meant to him without words, as his voice had completely fled.

"Do you think he'll be all right?" Rose asked softly after a moment. "He won't even have Donna now, and I hate to think of him all on his own like that."

"I won't lie to you, Rose, it's gonna be hard on him. He thought he'd finally gotten his miracle and gotten you back, only to lose you and Donna in the same day. But, I think he'll be okay in the end. I told you about River Song, and whoever she is, she seemed to be a huge part of my future, well, his future now. He'll find a hand to hold eventually."

"But, what you said about the Ood, and his song ending…"

"I think that means he's going to regenerate again soon. Which, honestly, might be a good thing in the end. Becoming a new man may help him to put the past behind him."

Comforted by her Doctor's words, Rose let out a long breath. "Well, I hope he's as happy there as I am with you," she said firmly, and the Doctor felt the discussion close, as clearly as if she'd closed an actual door. This was their life, the life he had given them, and they were not going to spend it worrying about him.

"Now, I'm starving. How 'bout those muffins?" Rose smiled, catching her tongue in her teeth in his favorite smile.

"Your wish is my command, Dame Rose," he said grandly, and kissed her once, briefly, before taking her hand and leading her to one of the chairs beside the tiny table, where they settled in to enjoy their breakfast in a much lighter mood.

0-0-0-0

After they finished eating (which took longer than it had any right to, since they kept playfully throwing napkins and muffin wrappers at each other), Rose decided to shower, feeling as though she hadn't been properly clean in years. She did so much faster than usual, still not comfortable with the idea of letting her Doctor out of her sight for longer than she had to. As she dried herself off in the bathroom, she couldn't help but glare at her three-day-old outfit, wishing she had something else to put on. Well, there was no help for it. She'd just have to change when they got home.

That word brought her up short. Since when did she think of the Tyler mansion, or anywhere else in this universe, as home? The sounds of the Doctor fiddling with something on the other side of the bathroom door reached her ears then, and immediately made her smile. Of course. This universe had become her home the minute he had set foot in it.

She finished drying her hair and stepped out of the bathroom, telling him it was his turn. He kissed her again first, then took his own shower, while she paced and fidgeted around the room, anxious and bored. As she wandered past the place where he'd tossed his jacket, she spotted something poking out of one of the pockets. She took a closer look, and sure enough, it was his sonic screwdriver. She picked it up, marveling at its presence. Had her Doctor nicked it from the TARDIS before they'd been dropped off, or did the Doctor simply keep a spare in every suit?

She heard the bathroom door open again, and turned to face him, holding up the sonic with an expression of mute inquiry. He chuckled.

"After that incident with the Judoon, when my sonic was destroyed, I made a couple of spares and put one in each suit," he explained. "I've got my brainy specs and a psychic paper, too, see?" He reached into his jacket pockets and pulled them out, proudly displaying them with a cheeky grin on his face.

She laughed. "Well, I'm glad you've still got your sonic. Doing without the TARDIS for a year and a half is one thing, but I'd hate to see what you'd be like without your precious sonic," she teased happily.

He opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. She winked at him and went to open it, revealing her mother, who had come to let them know that there was a car downstairs, waiting to take them to the airport.

The two of them babbled happily through the entire ride, making Jackie shake her head in resignation. _'Business as usual, then,'_ she thought.

They arrived at the airport without incident, and were escorted quickly through security, thanks to Pete Tyler's tremendous connections and influence. They emerged onto the private landing pad where the zeppelin was waiting for them, and as they neared the big grey ship, they were greeted by a small, excited voice.

"Sissy! Sissy! You're back, you're back!" Following this little voice was an ecstatic, adorable little redheaded toddler, who was running toward them as fast as his little legs could carry him, with Pete Tyler following in his wake, a huge smile on his face.

Seeing her baby brother, Rose let go of the Doctor's hand for the first time since they'd left their hotel room and ran forward to meet him, scooping Tony up in her arms and swinging him around in a circle, both of them laughing happily. As Pete and Jackie reunited to his right, the Doctor watched Rose interact with little Tony, a smile on his face. Clearly, the two of them shared a very special bond, and he couldn't help but feel relieved that she hadn't been forced to give that up.

After a moment, Pete and Jackie turned to face the Doctor, who held out his hand to shake Pete's. The two men greeted each other, but Jackie's attention was on her children, an incredulous smile on her face.

"I haven't seen her this happy in years," she breathed in wonder. "Mind you, Tony has been the only one who can get her to smile, last few years, but never like this." Abruptly she turned to the Doctor. "Thank you," she said, surprising the hell out of him.

"For what?" he asked, a bit confused.

"For coming back here, making her happy again, and giving her back to her family, all at the same time," Jackie said, and hugged him tightly. Completely stunned by her sudden display of affection, he barely had time to try and return her hug before she pulled away again.

At this point, Rose came back to the rest of them, carrying Tony on her hip, and gave her stepfather a quick, one-armed hug. She handed Tony to Jackie so she could say hello to her little son, then took her brother back before turning to the Doctor.

"Now, there's someone I want you to meet. Tony, this's the Doctor," she said, nodding at him. "Doctor, this is my brother, Tony."

"Pleased to meet you, Tony," the Doctor said, wearing his most charming smile and holding out a hand to the little boy.

"Hi Docta," Tony replied, taking the proffered hand in his little one and seeming to study him for a moment. "Are you Sissy's boyfriend?" he asked artlessly.

He looked at Rose, a bit taken aback by this question. She grinned and nodded slightly, so he looked back at Tony and replied, "I suppose I am."

The little boy studied him for a minute longer, completely oblivious to the wide grins on the faces of his entire family. He tilted his head to one side, a gesture eerily reminiscent of Rose, and then announced, "I like you, Docta," and held out his little arms, a clear invitation for the Doctor to hold him. Grinning hugely, Rose handed her brother over, a bit surprised at the expert way the Doctor took the little boy and settled him on his own hip.

"Well, Tony, that's good, because I like you too," he said, his own smile widening. "I think we're going to be great friends, what do you think?"

"S'long as you're nice to Sissy," Tony qualified, making Rose laugh.

"Come along then, you lot, let's go home," she said, and led the way to the zeppelin. Her family trailed along behind, with the Doctor still carrying Tony, the two happily chattering away while Pete and Jackie looked on in amusement.

The entire flight back to London was like that, as Tony planted himself on the Doctor's lap and refused to budge. As Rose watched the two of them interact, she felt her heart swell to bursting at the wonderful sight. '_He'll be such a fantastic father someday,' _she thought, as the Doctor had Tony and her parents in stitches with some story she wasn't really paying attention to. She then blushed suddenly as she realized where her mind was taking her. _'Whoa, girl, don't get ahead of yourself.'_

They landed at the landing pad nearest the Tyler mansion at a little after 1:00, and were greeted by a hoard of paparazzi, much to Rose's disgust.

"Sorry 'bout this Doctor, the pests are everywhere, can't get away from them. There'll probably be dozens of articles in the next couple of weeks as they try to figure out who you are, and once they find out we're together, they'll probably explode with excitement."

"Sudden, mysterious boyfriend of the equally mysterious long-lost daughter of the Vitex CEO, who is also the head of Torchwood?"

"Something like that, yeah," she said, grinning with her tongue in her teeth.

"The press is going to have a field day with you two," Pete warned. "Until they settle down a bit, don't do anything in public that you don't want all over a dozen gossip rags."

"How long do you think that'll take?" the Doctor asked, a bit dismayed by this turn of events. Sure, he enjoyed being the center of attention, but not like this.

"No idea," Pete admitted ruefully. "We're still waiting for them to settle down about Rose and Jacks, and that's been over three years."

"How did you play that anyway? What did you tell them?" he asked, curious.

"Said that Jacks was actually my first wife, and that it turned out she hadn't been killed by the Cybermen, but had been in a hospital with amnesia since the attack. They fell for that pretty easily, though they still made a big fuss over it. Rose was a little tougher to explain, especially since…" he trailed off, glancing at his stepdaughter.

Rose picked up the thread of his story without comment. "Especially since I wasn't in any shape to confirm or deny much of anything to the press, I was such a mess." A brief look of pain crossed the Doctor's face at that, so she leaned up and kissed him lightly, much to little Tony's disgust. She smirked, and playfully swatted her baby brother's arm before continuing. "Anyway, we ended up telling them that I was the daughter they'd had to give up for adoption real early in their lives, and who they'd been trying to find for years. That was a bit of a harder sell, and without the resources of Torchwood, we'd have never managed it, but they bought it in the end."

The Doctor nodded in approval of their choice of story. "Nicely done. Simple, believable, and with just enough scandal to satisfy them. You must be a pro, Pete."

All of the adult Tylers laughed at that. "Nope," Jackie said. "That was Pete's personal assistant and miracle worker, Christina Baker, she thought up the whole thing. She can sell any story, convince anyone of anything. She could probably convince the Pope he was Jewish."

Pete chuckled, but seemed to agree. "She was a lifesaver, always has been. She and her husband have worked for me for years. John's my attorney," he added in response to the Doctor's questioning noise.

"Well, time to face the music," Jackie announced, clapping her hands once. "We can't hide in here forever. Doctor, you'd better give Tony to Rose. No need to give them any more ammunition than we can help." The Doctor agreed, and Tony let Rose pick him up and carry him, though not without whining a bit. The Doctor took Rose's free hand, and together the little family emerged from the zeppelin to wade through the swarms of paparazzi lying in wait.

By the time they managed to escape the clutches of the camera-wielding horde and reach the Tyler mansion, the Doctor was heartily wishing he could exchange each and every one of them with a Dalek.

"How do you all deal with this every day?" he asked in wonder as they settled around the table in the dining room for a late lunch.

Rose snorted. "Practice, mostly. Although, they're not always this bad. I don't usually have to deal with them at work, and they stay away from the mansion for the most part. I think that's because they're afraid that Dad or I will shoot them if they come near us here."

"Why would they be afraid of that?" he asked, puzzled.

"Torchwood's got an interesting reputation. No one seems to be able to comprehend that it's different now, that this Torchwood doesn't go around shooting the people who annoy them."

"And the old one did?" His heart sank at the thought.

Now it was Pete's turn to snort. "Why do you think I decided to shut them down and rebuild it? They had a number of nasty habits, not the least of which being that they thought it was perfectly acceptable to shoot any alien life form they saw, without even bothering to find out whether they were hostile or not. An organization dedicated to understanding alien life and defending Earth from hostile forces sounded like a good idea, given what happened with the Cybermen, but I didn't like their methods, and neither did a lot of other people."

"So, you decided to take control and use the organization to actually defend the Earth. Brilliant," the Doctor praised him, pleased that his Rose wasn't involved in a version of Torchwood like the one that had taken her away from him.

After lunch, Rose took a protesting Tony upstairs to put him down for a nap, with the Doctor trailing along behind them. When the little boy was tucked up in his room, they stepped out into the hallway and Rose turned to face him.

"I have got to change out of these clothes, I feel like they're soaked in Void stuff and it's making me itchy," she declared, then stopped in dismay. "You don't have anything to change into, do you? I'm sorry, I should have thought. We'll have to take you shopping for a wardrobe. Might as well go ahead and do that this afternoon, Dad won't mind helping you out."

A look of comic dismay crossed his features. "Clothes shopping? Really? Do we have to?"

Rose had to laugh at the look on his face. "You sound like Tony, 'Do I _have_ to?' and yes, yes you do. You can't spend your whole life wearing one incomplete suit, and for now you don't have the TARDIS wardrobe with its infinite supply of clothes, so you'll just have to buy some like a normal person."

He grimaced, but had to admit that she had a point, and reluctantly agreed to let her take him clothes shopping, and followed her to her bedroom so she could change.

When they walked in, he was surprised to see that, unlike both her old bedroom in her Mum's flat and the one on the TARDIS, this room was not decorated in excessive amounts of pink, but rather in blue. At the quizzical look on his face, she turned to him and raised her eyebrows.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing, I guess I was just expecting pink."

Rose's eyes dropped away from him for a moment. "I kinda outgrew that phase," she muttered. Sensing that she didn't want to discuss her change in decorating taste, he dropped it, though he was still curious. While she picked out an outfit from her closet and slipped into her bathroom to change, he wandered aimlessly around her bedroom, trying to suppress the thrill he felt at being in _Rose Tyler's bedroom_. After a moment, though, he couldn't help but think that the room was heartlessly plain. It was handsomely furnished, and looked comfortable enough, but it aside from the single color decorating scheme, it didn't seem to have any personality. His eyes fell then on the single framed photograph on the bedside table, and he wandered over to have a look.

He recognized it immediately; it was of him and Rose at the 2012 Olympics, grinning happily with their arms around each other, flushed with the success of their adventure. Rose had gotten a friendly passerby to take it with her phone, so she must have had it with her when she was trapped here. He swallowed down a lump in his throat as he realized abruptly that the room wasn't just decorated in blue. Everything around him, from the curtains to the duvet to the cushion in the window seat, was _TARDIS blue._

"Oh, Rose," he murmured thickly, gently tracing her photographed face with his fingertips. He heard the bathroom door start to open behind him, and quickly put down the frame where he'd found it, rapidly composing himself.

"Ready to go?" his Rose asked as she emerged, dressed in clean clothes.

"Yeah," he replied, taking her hand. When she started for the door, however, he gently pulled her to a stop. She turned back to face him, curious, and he lifted his free hand to stroke her cheek.

"I love you, Rose Tyler," he said quietly, and lowered his lips to hers, kissing her slowly and tenderly. When they broke apart, she sighed softly and smiled into his eyes.

"I love you too, my Doctor." They stood there for a long moment, reveling in their moment of peace, then Rose led him out of her bedroom. "Come on, we've got loads of shopping to do," she said, grinning at his groan of dismay. Giggling madly, she pulled him down the stairs and out of the house for what he sensed was going to be a _long_ afternoon.

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**

**By the way, this next week is finals week, so I might be a bit slow with updates for a little while, but starting next week this story should have my undivided attention.**


	3. Chapter 3: The Domestic Approach

**Sorry Chapter 3 took a bit longer, it just didn't want to cooperate. Felt like I was fighting the muse for every sentence. Anyway, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Three: The Domestic Approach

Taking the Doctor clothes shopping turned out to be one of the most entertaining things Rose had done in years. He fussed and pouted over just about everything, but he looked adorable doing so and she won nearly every argument, which meant that she had the distinct pleasure of essentially dressing the Doctor according to her every whim. The entire afternoon turned into something of a voyeuristic pleasure for Rose, as he was so slim and, yes, _foxy,_ that he looked absolutely phenomenal in everything. She let him start out with suits, but made him get a couple that weren't pinstriped, including a black one that looked particularly sexy. After they also purchased dress shirts and ties in every color of the rainbow, she bullied him into some more casual wear, the sight of him in jeans making her mouth water. Unfortunately for her dignity, he noticed the way she ogled him in those jeans, which led to hours of being teased for it and did nothing for his over-inflated ego.

The one argument she lost was over shoes. She tried hard to get him into some more formal dress shoes, but he flatly refused to even consider anything other than several pairs of his favorite trainers in different colors. Eventually, she let him win that one, deciding that she had to pick her battles, and there were better hills to die on. Besides, she secretly enjoyed his taste in footwear, and had to agree that wearing shoes you could run in was vitally important in the life the Doctor led.

The Doctor also had far more fun than he would ever admit, even to Rose, just simply because he was with her. It didn't matter what they were doing, really; just having her around made everything more fun. His favorite purchase was the long, brown trench coat they'd found. It was nearly the same as his old one (though perhaps a shade or two darker) and he felt far more like himself with it flapping around his ankles.

The best moment of the afternoon, however, was when he caught Rose practically drooling over him when he was wearing the jeans. At first, he'd only put them on because she'd insisted, but the sight of her reaction made him vow to wear them every chance he got. Clearly, she approved of the way he looked in them, and the look she'd worn was one that he _definitely_ wanted to see again. Frequently, if possible.

They returned to the Tyler mansion in the early evening, laden with a ridiculous number of shopping bags, which would have taken at least three trips to shift upstairs to the room he'd been given if it hadn't been for the assistance of the staff. The Doctor wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of people waiting on him, but Pete and Jackie paid them well and treated them with respect, and he was grateful for their help in this instance. However, once they got everything upstairs, he and Rose declined any assistance in putting away his new wardrobe. Instead, they undertook the task themselves, with a great deal of laughter and stolen kisses. He also took the opportunity to change into one of the new suits, deciding ruefully that the place for the blue one he'd been wearing was the bin. It had had a rather hard life, after all.

The guest room that was now his was just across the hall from Rose's room, for which they were both grateful. While they had determined not to rush their relationship, neither was comfortable with being too far away from the other. The room was handsomely furnished, like Rose's, but in soft, bland colors rather than blue and it had a couple of generic paintings on the wall that he privately thought were boring. Rose had caught his look of distaste and giggled slightly, promising him he could redecorate later if he wanted.

That evening, they also took the time to find a quiet, private place on the grounds where they could set the small piece of TARDIS coral to start growing. As he completed the necessary modifications to accelerate its growth, they shared a delighted smile, nearly bouncing up and down in their excitement. They were both eager for the TARDIS to grow so that they could get back out among the stars. In the meantime, Rose intended to keep working for Torchwood, and offered to take him there in the morning and show him around so that he could decide if he wanted to offer his services as well. He was a little hesitant about that, but had to agree that he was certainly going to need something to do for the next year and a half, and only Torchwood was likely to be able to offer him any scope for his talents. Besides, this universe's version was nothing like the other one anymore, as Rose and her stepfather had pointed out earlier.

They had dinner with her family and spent the remainder of the evening chatting with her parents in the lounge with Rose feeling rather astonished that her Doctor was able to sit still for that long. Granted, he was discussing the ins and outs of Torchwood's latest technological projects with Pete, not making idle small talk with her mother, but Rose still had to smother her surprise. Either he was making an extraordinary effort for her sake, or the bit of Donna in him was really doing him good. Of course, he could still just be caught up in the novelty of the whole situation, but Rose really hoped that wasn't it.

She didn't really contribute much to the technical discussion, as her efforts had been focused exclusively on the Dimension Cannon project, finding most of the work done by Research and Development a bit tedious for her taste. Before they'd started building the Cannon, she'd preferred doing something a bit more active, like field duty. She found herself wondering what her Doctor would say if he found out about some of the more dangerous missions she'd been on and mentally winced away from the topic, resolving instantly to _never tell him._ She'd probably have to bully Jake and a few of the others into keeping their mouths shut as well. The Doctor'd probably have a heart attack if he found out about how much danger she'd put herself in, especially about that one incident in Portugal… Well, that had been on the one year anniversary of the Doctor's farewell on Bad Wolf Bay, and she'd been feeling a bit… reckless. Pete, Jake and Mickey had all been ready to box her ears over that one, and the only reason she hadn't been crucified by Jackie was because Pete and the others had determined it was smarter not to tell her.

It had been during her two week suspension after the events in Lisbon that she had really come to realize that she had to dial it back a bit, if not for her sake, then for the sake of the people who cared about her. She might not have felt she had much to live for, but if something happened to her, her family and the few friends she had would take it somewhat amiss, and she couldn't do that to them. It had also hit her that if she got herself killed, she _really _wouldn't ever see the Doctor again. With those two things in mind, she'd stopped leaping blindly into the most dangerous situations she could find, though she still had a reputation among the Torchwood agents as being "reckless," an "adrenaline junkie," and a bit mad. Despite all of this, her fellow agents respected her courage, determination, and the fierce way she protected any others serving with her on a mission, though they still gave her a wide berth on a personal level. Besides Jake and the ever-faithful Mickey, she'd really only made one friend here; the Torchwood doctor who had most often patched up her injuries, a young woman named Emma Davis. Tragically, Emma had been killed in an alien attack just over a year ago, and despite Rose's "obsession" with the Doctor, the young medic's death had shaken her to the core, and she still missed her. She wished so much that she could have introduced Emma to the Doctor. They would have been such great friends, and Emma would have been so happy that Rose had him back.

The enormous grandfather clock in the corner chimed midnight, startling her out of her introspection and interrupting Pete and the Doctor's discussion, Jackie having given up and gone to bed hours ago.

"Blimey," Pete said with a bit of a yawn. "If you two are going to head in to Torchwood in the morning, you should get some rest. And even if you're not, I'm going to bed, since I _have_ to be there. Goodnight, you two," he said, hauling himself to his feet and kissing Rose's forehead. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Pete headed off upstairs, and Rose and the Doctor looked at each other for a moment, then had to laugh when they both yawned simultaneously.

"I think that's our cue to go to bed, don't you think?" Rose grinned.

The Doctor shared her smile. "Well, it has been a rather long day."

Rose's smile suddenly morphed into a frown as something occurred to her. "Hold on, I thought you said you didn't need as much sleep as humans. Is that part of the whole metacrisis thing? That you'll need just as much sleep as me?"

He sighed. "Well, not quite as much, perhaps, but yes, my sleep cycle seems to be mostly human rather than Timelord." He made a disgusted face. "What a waste of time, sleeping for eight hours a day. Do you know how much more you people would be able to get done if you didn't spend so much time sleeping?"

Rose giggled a little, then yawned again. "Waste of time or not, it's something we both need to do, so come on, Lord of Time. Allons-y."

"That's my line," he protested as he stood up and offered Rose his hand. She took it and stood as well, and they started up the stairs to their respective rooms.

"Well, you're just going to have to learn to share," she teased.

He sniffed in mild disdain, but was unable to hide the twinkle in his eye. "Well, as long as I only have to share with you, Rose Tyler, I think I can manage that."

They came to a halt in the hallway between their rooms, and Rose was overcome with a powerful dislike of the separate sleeping arrangements. "Do you really have to sleep away from me?" she asked softly.

He gave her a small, tender smile. "I'm not going to disappear, Rose. I'll still be here in the morning. Plus, I think your mother would slap me if I tried to sleep in your room. She put up with it last night because we were in a hotel, but…"

Rose sighed in resignation. "S'pose you've got a point, there."

The Doctor could still sense her reluctance, though, and tilted her chin up with his hand so that their eyes met. "I love you, Rose," he whispered, and gave her a long, lingering kiss that chased all other thoughts out of Rose's head. When he released her, they were both breathless, and even less eager to spend the night apart. However, as the Doctor had pointed out, they didn't really have much choice, so they reluctantly said goodnight and slipped into their respective rooms for the night.

0-0-0-0-0

_ He was trapped, stuck behind a wall of glass that refused to yield to his furious attempts to break it down. On the other side was Rose, screaming in terror as the airlock door behind her was blasted open, and she was sucked out into the void of space, still calling his name in a broken voice._

_ He screamed her name, helpless to reach her, beating his fists bloody on the unforgiving wall that held him away from her as his soul ripped in half again and again, until there was nothing left but shards and the knowledge that he'd lost her, he'd lost her again-_

The Doctor jerked awake with gasp of Rose's name and sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in a cold sweat and eyes darting frantically around the room before it registered that he had been dreaming. Shaking, he scrubbed his hands across his face and listened to his heart hammering in his chest as he tried to calm down. Finally, he decided that sleep was more exhausting than being awake and kicked off his blankets, wrapping a dressing gown around his shoulders as he began to pace, unable to shake the terror brought on by his nightmare.

He didn't even have time to make a full circuit around the room before the black silence of the night was shattered by a scream from across the hall. He turned on his heel and raced out of his room, only one thought in his mind.

_"Rose!"_

0-0-0-0-0

_She clung with all her might to the magna-clamp, watching Daleks and Cybermen whizzing through the lever room and into the Void. She looked across the room at the Doctor, clinging just as tightly to his own clamp, and they shared a grin. It was working, his mad, brilliant plan was actually working, and soon Earth would once again be free from the cybernetic life forms that had tried to destroy it. The mighty words the Doctor had once spoken, "It is defended!" echoed once again through her mind._

_ But just as the hope of success began to swell in her heart, one of the Daleks collided with the lever on the Doctor's side, knocking it offline. The suction from the Void began to let up, and the Doctor grimaced. Suddenly, she panicked, knowing what he was going to do, and screamed for him to stop. He ignored her and released his grip on the magna-clamp, seizing the lever and hauling it back into place. But the suction was too strong, and he lost his grip on the lever and was pulled into the Void, with Rose screaming his name at the top of her lungs, forced to watch as he was ripped away from her. Her world shattered into a million pieces, and she couldn't think, only scream helplessly as the man she loved disappeared into the Void, gone forever._

"Rose! Rose, you're having a nightmare, wake up! Rose!"

Rose was jolted awake by the sound of his voice and his hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently. She gasped as the world came sharply into focus, and the first thing she saw was his worried face, paler than the moonlight streaming in her window. She quickly sat up and reached for him, and he pulled her tightly against his chest, where she cuddled close, feeling his heart racing as quickly as hers.

They clung tightly together for a long time, each wrestling with their own terrors, comforted only by the other's presence. Gradually, they calmed down enough to release their white-knuckled grips and eased back to look into each other's faces.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the Doctor asked quietly, smoothing her hair away from her face.

She took several deep breaths, still shaking. "We- we were back in the lever room at Canary Wharf, only this time it was y-you who lost your grip and f-fell into the Void, only there wasn't anyone to c-catch you," she stammered, and buried her head in his chest, her breathing ragged. She eventually calmed down, comforted by his strong grip on her, and began to realize that she wasn't the only one experiencing distress. His dark T-shirt was soaked in sweat, and his grip seemed to be less comforting and more clinging. "Are you all right?" she managed, lifting her head to try and meet his eyes.

He gave a long, shuddering breath before answering her haltingly. "This night, my dreams were also somewhat less than sweet," he admitted, swallowing hard. "I dreamed I'd lost you again."

She finally managed to catch his eyes at the end of his admission, and they stared at each other for a fraction of a second before their lips crashed together in a frantic kiss, filled with as much desperation as passion. Both were desperate to prove, really prove, to themselves that the other was still there, that they hadn't been brutally yanked apart again. He kissed her as though he would reach past her skin and merge them together, his hand coming up into her hair to hold her head in place even as she did the same, her fingers gripping his tousled locks so tightly her knuckles hurt. His tongue prodded her lips, not so much seeking as demanding entrance, which she willingly gave, and he ferociously claimed her mouth, a low groan in his throat. The sound sent little shockwaves through her body, and she couldn't help but echo it with a moan of her own even as she wrenched her lips away, dizzy from lack of oxygen. He was relentless, though, barely allowing her to gulp in a full breath before claiming her lips again. His needy kisses were rapidly chasing away her fears and replacing them with an all-consuming desire for this man who held her so tightly and kissed her so passionately.

The Doctor lost himself in Rose, burying his nightmare in the feel of her lips, jaw, and throat against his own possessive lips and tongue. All thoughts of reason flew out of his head, and all he knew was that he never wanted to let go of the woman in his arms. Acting purely on instinct, he shifted fully onto her bed and lowered her down onto her back, covering her body with his own as he sought to kiss her into oblivion. Needing more of her, he slid one hand beneath the thin camisole she wore, letting out another desperate groan as his hand made contact with her soft skin.

It was the feel of his hand on her bare back that finally snapped Rose back to reality, and she wrenched her mouth free, gasping for air. "Doctor," she managed, trying to get his attention. He ignored her, moving his seeking mouth down to her neck and nipping at it lightly. She whimpered, a part of her hating herself for what she was about to do. "Doctor, we have to stop," she gasped out, and the word "stop" finally seeped into the Doctor's fogged mind. He hauled his head up with a groan and met her eyes, and the dark look in his nearly made Rose change her mind about stopping this. "We're not ready for this, we're both freaked out and not thinking clearly, and this isn't the time." She had no idea how she found the willpower to get the sentence out with him giving her that look, but somehow she managed.

He gazed at her for a moment longer, then pulled himself away from her with a frustrated groan, lying on his back next to her as they both tried to calm their raging hormones. His left hand found her right, and they held on, gulping oxygen into their lungs without speaking for a long moment.

"You're right," the Doctor said, several minutes later, finally finding his voice. "We're not thinking clearly, and this isn't the right time for this." He turned his head to face her, a slightly apologetic look on his face. But when he opened his mouth again, she quickly intuited his intent and shushed him.

"No, don't apologize. That was just as much me as it was you, and I want you, I do." She blushed slightly at her own words, grateful that he probably couldn't see that in the darkness of her room. "I just don't want to rush into this and risk messing it up."

"Neither do I," her Doctor agreed. "Though it's a little hard to remember how to slow down when you taste so _delectable,"_ he added with a cheeky grin that she heard more than saw.

"Down, boy," she admonished him, though some of the effect was lost, due to the breathy quality of her own voice. He chuckled, but held his peace.

They lay there in the darkness of her room for quite a while before Rose spoke again, a bit hesitantly. "Do you have to go back to your room?"

He raised himself up on one elbow and locked eyes with her. "I think it's safe to say that this little experiment was a complete and utter failure. Splitting ourselves up was a terrible idea, and we're not doing that again." He reached over and pulled her into his arms, settling her head on his lean chest, much the same as they had been the previous night. "This time, I'm not leaving until you kick me out."

Rose snuggled contentedly against him. "Then you're going to be here a while."

0-0-0-0-0

When Rose woke the next morning, it was to the delightful feeling of the Doctor's arms around her, her head still resting on his chest. She smiled without opening her eyes, more than content to stay right where she was and never move again, but he was already awake and noticed her return to the land of the living.

"Good morning," he said, gently stroking her hair away from her face, his voice low.

She reluctantly lifted her head and met his warm brown eyes. "G'morning."

"Sleep well?" he asked, a smug smile teasing at the corner of his lips.

"Yeah," she agreed, and frowned when his smug grin widened. "What's that look for? Oh, God, don't tell me I snored. Or talked in my sleep, or something."

He laughed. "No, you're a quiet sleeper."

"Then what's with the cheeky look?"

_"My _experiment was a complete success," he announced. "No more nightmares, for either of us. I think you're going to have to learn to share," he said, sweeping his gaze obviously over her bed.

Rose couldn't help but grin at the enthusiasm with which he made this pronouncement. "Then we might want to think about getting our own place so we don't scandalize the maids, annoy my parents, and corrupt my baby brother."

His wide grin softened then, into a tender, loving smile. He stroked her hair away from her face, his fingers lingering on her cheekbone. "I think I'd like that. Our own place," he mused, his thoughts whirling a bit. "Until we get the TARDIS back, anyway," he added, and bounced out of the bed in a lightning fast change of mood. "Then it's back to exploring all the wonders of the universe. And hey, whole new universe. Who knows what sorts of planets and creatures and horizons are waiting for us out there. Oh, just you wait, Rose Tyler, it's going to be-"

"Fantastic?" she finished for him, catching her tongue in her teeth, and he grinned at her, making that adorable happy sound in his throat that she loved so much.

"Fantastic," he agreed. "Also amazing. Brilliant. Molto Bene! Plus lots of other similar adjectives. Magnificent, phenomenal-"

She cut into his ramble, laughing. "Doctor, we're supposed to be at Torchwood in an hour," she reminded him. "If we're going to make it, then we need to get ready.

He pouted. "Do we have to?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Yes, and stop acting like my baby brother, it's not even cute when he says that. You're supposed to be over nine hundred years old, didn't you ever learn how to act like a grown-up?"

His cheeky grin was back. "Nope."

Rose sighed in mock resignation. "Well, then I guess you're lucky I love you, or I wouldn't put up with you. Now, shift. Go get dressed and let me do the same," she ordered, throwing back her covers and getting out of bed.

"Yes ma'am," he said, giving her a mock salute, but he still didn't make it out of her room for nearly ten minutes because he kept stealing kisses. She finally got her overly-affectionate Doctor shoved out the door, and started getting ready for the day, thinking that the grin on her face was threatening to become a permanent fixture. Not like that was a bad thing, though.

As she entered the kitchen a while later, dressed in a simple, but elegant navy pantsuit and pale blue shirt, she first thing she saw was the Doctor, eating a banana and drinking a cup of tea, and the first thing she did was burst into laughter. He glanced up at her entrance, bewildered.

"What?"

Rose doubled over, unable to speak, and gestured between the two of them. "Look, just look," she gasped out. "Look at what you're wearing."

The Doctor looked down at his own handsome, flattering navy blue pinstriped suit, pale blue shirt and navy tie, and looked back at Rose. "What? Is there something wrong with this?"

She shook her head, still gasping for air. "Look at what I'm wearing." He looked her over, still puzzled, and then she saw the light bulb turn on as he got it.

"Hmmm, we seem to have similar taste today," he said, a look of merriment dancing in his eyes. "How far do these shared tastes go, do you think? Are you also sharing in the desire for a banana?" he asked, holding one out to her. "Or in the desire to do this?"

Their fingers touched as she took the banana, and he used that to get a grip on her hand, pulling her into his arms and kissing her. When they broke apart, she gave him a grin that rivaled his own for cheekiness.

"Oh, definitely the banana, thanks," she said, and quickly peeled the one he'd handed her, taking a bite. Her grin widened even farther at the exasperated expression on his face.

"Tease," he accused her, his eyes dancing.

"Payback," she retorted. "For all those times when it was you teasing me."

They teased and laughed their way through breakfast and were just getting ready to leave when Rose suddenly frowned.

"What is it?"

"Well, something just occurred to me. I think you're going to need a human name if you're going to work for Torchwood."

"Why's that?" he asked, puzzled.

"It's a bit complicated, but there's a lot of people in this world who are still pretty xenophobic, and they'd probably go spare if they found out there was an alien working for Torchwood, the organization that's supposed to protect them from aliens. Add in the fact that you're with me, and the press would go ballistic, and turn this into a huge political nightmare for Dad. There's already a lot of people who think he's too soft on alien life forms and think the old regime had it right and we should just shoot first and ask questions of the corpse. If people find out that not only is he employing an alien, but that the alien in question is dating his daughter…"

"Then he might lose hold of the organization entirely, and you think that if I go by 'the Doctor' it'll be a dead giveaway."

"Sort of, yeah." She shuffled awkwardly.

"Well, I think I can see your point."

Rose relaxed, relieved that he wasn't offended by this. "So, what do you want to go by? We can have Torchwood create an identity file for you, or you can just use the psychic paper."

He chuckled. "Psychic paper might not cut it this time. If you weren't such a celebrity, I'd probably be fine, but as is, some pesky reporter is going to decide to 'uncover the truth about the Vitex heiress' mysterious boyfriend,' and the psychic paper won't help there. I think I'll have to accept that identity file you mentioned."

"So, what do I call you in public, then?"

He thought for a moment. "Well, I suppose I could always use 'John Smith,' but this is a lot more permanent than that usually is. Plus, the last time I used that name for an extended period of time, it didn't end particularly well, and I think I'd rather go by something else."

"Plus, John Smith just sounds like a pseudonym, and people might question that. And it would be pretty boring, and it doesn't really suit you, anyway."

He grinned down at her. "I'm glad you agree, Rose Tyler. What do you think of James?"

"That it's almost as common a name as John," she replied. "If you like it, though, then so do I, I'm not picky. It'll be your name, after all."

"James," he said slowly, trying it out on his tongue. After a moment, he decided he did like it. "James it is."

"What about a last name? Smith?"

"No, that's boring. What would you think of-" He stopped, suddenly self-conscious.

"What, Doctor?" she asked, trying to meet his evasive eyes.

He slowly turned his head back around to face her, his eyes soft. "How would you feel if I used Tyler?" he asked softly, heart hammering in his throat as he waited for her response.

She gaped at him, stunned. He wanted to use her last name? She thought for a moment, but it only took her about thirty seconds to decide. "I think that'd be fine," she replied, her voice as quiet as his.

"Really? That's not strange for you?"

She fidgeted for a moment, trying to articulate what she was feeling. "No, actually… I'm sort of flattered. You pick out a name that'll be yours for the rest of your life, and you choose _my_ last name?" She paused, still trying to take it in, and to not jump to conclusions about possible implications of his choice. She ended up giving that last part up as a bad job, though. The image of herself in a white dress and the Doctor in a tux simply refused to go away. She forced her thoughts back to the conversation about his name, mentally telling herself to get a grip. "Do you want a middle name? 'Cause I actually had an idea about that."

"What's that?"

"Noble," she said, meeting his eyes with a sad smile. "After Donna. We may never see her again, but this way we could still honor her memory."

He swallowed against the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat. "Rose Tyler, you are brilliant," he said softly, his voice thick with emotion. They stood together in the hall, holding each other's hands and lost in the emotionally charged moment before the clock chimed and broke into their focus.

"So then, James Noble Tyler. Shall we have the paperwork goons put that on your birth certificate and stuff?" Rose asked.

"Sounds good to me," he replied.

"All right then, off to Torchwood. First stop personnel to set up your new identity, then I'll start showing you the toys in R&D." She picked up her car keys from the hook on the wall and took his hand.

"Lead on, Rose Tyler," he said with a grin.

With that, Rose and her Doctor left the mansion and headed for her car, swinging their clasped hands and happily chattering away, just as they always had.

**Thanks for reading, and please review! **

**If you're wondering why I named the Doctor James instead of John, well… I think John Smith is boring, and since he's going to be using the name a lot, I wanted to give him something more interesting. As to why I didn't just let him stay "Doctor," well. Stick with me and I promise you'll find out eventually!**


	4. Chapter 4: Diamonds and Telepaths

**Bit of a shorter chapter, but it seemed to end on its own, so who am I to argue with the muse? I had sooooo much fun writing this one, so I hope you have as much fun reading it.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Four: Diamonds and Telepaths

"Rose! Duck!"

Without stopping to ask why, Rose hit the deck just as something heavy went flying over her shoulder and crashed into the wall. She looked up just in time to see the Doctor dive behind a desk to avoid being clobbered himself as the robot threw something in his direction, dropping the electromagnetic bomb in the process. The little bundle of wires rolled out of his reach and towards Rose, who snatched it up and launched it at the robot before it had the chance to attack again. Fortunately, her aim was true, and the bomb latched onto the robot's arm, sending a shockwave of energy through its systems and disabling it. It fell to the ground, twitching, then with one final jerk, it was still.

For a few seconds, neither she nor the Doctor moved as they stared at the fallen robot, then Rose spoke up.

"Was that the last one?"

The Doctor fished himself out from under the desk and dusted off his suit. "Think so." He strode over to the computer on the wall and checking the files. "Yep. Professor nut-job there seems to have only built the four of them. Apparently that's all the parts he could get his hands on."

Rose breathed a sigh of relief and walked over to join the Doctor, and he turned to wrap his arms around her in a traditional "victory hug," then kissed her swiftly.

"Are you all right?" he asked, his eyes sweeping up and down her body looking for any signs of injury.

"Yeah, I'm fine. You?"

"Didn't even scratch my glasses," he said proudly. "Although, next time, remind me not to wear them in a situation like this. Don't know where I'd be able to find another pair of these frames if they got broken."

Rose chuckled, shaking her head, then sobered slightly. "What about Professor- what was his name again?" she asked, gesturing at the far corner, where she could see a crumpled body wearing a lab coat.

The Doctor released her and went over to the body, scanning it with the sonic, then sighed. "He's dead, I'm afraid. Killed by his own creations." He reached out and closed the man's eyes. "Sorry, I'm so sorry."

Rose sighed as well. "Well, I can't say as I feel too sorry for him. After all, he did just try to build a bunch of killer robots. What'd he want those things for anyway?"

"I'd say, judging by the software he was programming, that they were supposed to be bodyguards, but he messed up the programming trying to be cleverer than he was. All his notes and things, he seems to have been completely paranoid, always worrying that someone was going to steal his research. So, he decided to build the robots to protect his lab, but forgot to tell them that he himself wasn't an intruder."

"Okay, so, maybe I do feel a bit sorry for him then. The mad scientist really was just, mad."

"Yeah," the Doctor said, getting to his feet. "It's a bit sad, really. Still, can't be helped. Do you want to contact Jakey-boy, or shall I?"

"I'll let Jake know the job is done and get him to send a clean-up crew, you see if there's anything interesting you can download from his computers, then wipe them," Rose said, fishing out her cell to contact Jake back at Torchwood.

"Yes ma'am," he said cheekily.

"Oi, shut it," she retorted with a grin. She dialed Jake's number and filled him in on the situation, her smile still lingering on her face.

It had been nearly eight months since Bad Wolf Bay, eight months in which she and her Doctor, who now went by James in public, had grown incredibly close, closer even than they had been while traveling in the TARDIS. They no longer held anything back from each other, mentally, emotionally, even physically. He'd told her the truth of Gallifrey and the Time War, and she'd finally told him about her utter recklessness and borderline death wish during the first year of their separation. It hadn't always been easy for either of them, but they'd refused to give up, and now they had forged an unbreakable bond between them that was hard to describe. They had always been unshakably close, but this went far beyond that. They'd even been in each other's heads, connecting their minds telepathically in intimate moments.

_That _had been an experience unlike any other, trusting each other so completely and without reservation, sharing absolutely everything and holding nothing back. They'd both been shocked to discover that she was actually borderline telepathic herself, far more so than any other member of her race that the Doctor had ever encountered. After a lot of scans and tests, he'd finally concluded that it must have been a leftover side effect of her experience with Bad Wolf, augmented by her long exposure to the TARDIS' telepathic field. She didn't really care how it had happened, she was just glad that she could reach out to him for the connection they had both begun to crave. It had gotten to the point that they never let a single day go by without joining their minds together, an act that meant just as much to them as any physical intimacy. Then, of course, there were the times when he made love to her while their minds were joined, and that… Well. They were both completely positive that nothing could ever possibly be better than _that._

They had only stayed with her parents for about a week, just long enough to get his identity established and find a suitable flat, about halfway between the Tyler mansion and the Torchwood Tower. (Fortunately for both their sanity, the Tower was not called Canary Wharf in this world, just Torchwood.) The flat wasn't large, but it suited them. It had two bedrooms, the smaller of which they used as a workshop for the Doctor's many projects, most of which had something to do with the baby TARDIS that was still growing on the Tyler estate. She was growing beautifully, and while they were both eager for her to finish so they could get back out among the stars, it was very reassuring to see her a little larger and more complete every time they went to check on her, and to feel her telepathic signature growing stronger daily. In the meantime, working with Torchwood kept them both from getting bored.

The Torchwood team had welcomed "Dr. James Tyler" with cries of joy, delighted to have someone with his knowledge and experience. He'd slipped into the routine with very few hiccups, excepting, of course, the time they tried to get him to carry a gun in the field. Rose never knew exactly what had happened, but they had never asked him again, and had also stopped badgering Rose about her own refusal to carry a firearm. She figured that he'd unleashed the might of the Oncoming Storm in their general direction, and they had wisely decided to let it go. Part of her wished she could have seen that, but the rest of her figured she was better off not knowing.

Their work with Torchwood was varied and exciting, ranging from fighting off an alien menace to negotiating a treaty with the Korellians, to helping out in Research and Development. That last usually involved Rose standing off to the side laughing her head off while her Doctor turned the entire department upside down and acted like a kid given free rein in a candy store. Negotiating the treaty with the Korellians had been one of their favorite assignments, as they helped planet Earth begin to interact peacefully with another race for the first time.

Today's incident with the robots was nothing out of the ordinary, and had almost qualified as "just another day at the office." Someone in the south of London had called in an alert to Torchwood, screaming hysterically about giant robots. Rose and the Doctor had been dispatched to the scene to investigate, and had discovered that there were, in fact, giant robots, created by an old scientist named Professor Finnegan. The old man had something of a reputation for being a bit mad, as well as a tendency to blow things up. The two of them had intended to simply slip into the large building to find out what the situation was, and had ended up dealing with it before they even thought of calling for backup. To be fair though, they hardly ever called for backup, preferring to handle things between the two of them, like old times.

The Doctor finished with the computers about the time that the clean-up crew arrived, and the two of them turned over the situation, then headed back to Torchwood for a full debriefing. After they told the full story of the robots and their mad scientist, Pete turned them loose, saying that they had done enough for one day, and reminding them that they were expected at Sunday dinner at the mansion this weekend. They assured him that they wouldn't forget, then scampered off to enjoy their weekend.

0-0-0-0-0

Later that evening, the two of them were curled up together on the sofa in their living room, the remains of dinner strewn across the coffee table. Rose closed her eyes, sighing contentedly as he nuzzled the back of her neck, placing light kisses along her neck and shoulder. The television was on, but neither one of them had even the faintest idea what was playing, being far too wrapped up in each other. All in all, a typical, perfect evening to Rose's mind. They both frequently preferred to stay in rather than risk having their evenings crashed by the paparazzi, who seemed determined to catch them doing something scandalous. So far, the only thing they'd gotten was a shot of Rose and "James" kissing on a park bench, and the two of them were determined to keep it that way.

Gradually, Rose began to realize that her Doctor was being awfully quiet tonight, far more quiet than usual. Carefully, she turned in his arms to face him, but when she opened her mouth to ask what was up, he simply seized his opportunity and kissed her. She let him for a while, as his kisses were a thing to be enjoyed wherever and whenever the opportunity arose, then gently pulled away. He made a small sound of disappointment, which made her smile, but she needed to know what was bothering him.

"You've been awfully quiet tonight, you know that? What's on your mind?"

He smiled ruefully. "You know me too well, Rose Tyler." He paused for a moment, then shifted them both so that they were sitting up on the sofa, facing each other, and reached for the remote to turn off the TV. "Actually, there was something I wanted to talk to you about, and I was trying to figure out where to begin." He fell silent, clearly trying to organize his thoughts, and Rose remained quiet, letting him think while she admired his handsome face. Unable to resist, she reached up and ran her fingers through his ruffled hair, smiling as his eyes closed in pleasure and he leaned into her touch, a happy smile crossing his lips. As her hand left his head, his eyes snapped open again and he suddenly blurted "I want to ask you to be my bond mate."

Rose blinked in surprise. "I'm sorry, what?"

He ran his own hand through his hair and tugged on his ear, blushing slightly and avoiding her gaze. "Bugger. That came out rather abruptly, didn't it?" he said, trying to make light of the situation. He reached out and took both of her hands in his, meeting her eyes again, and his voice grew serious. "Rose, we've been spending a lot of time in each other's heads lately, and that connection means more to me than I know how to say. After- After Gallifrey-" his voice faltered, and she squeezed his hands encouragingly. He smiled at her and went on. "After that, I never thought I'd be able to share my mind with anyone, and now, to not only be able to do that, but to share my mind with someone I love… It's amazing, beyond amazing, and I never want to give it up." He stopped and took in a deep, shuddering breath, and Rose waited patiently, sensing that something huge was coming.

"Back on Gallifrey, when two people decided to commit to each other, they'd form a telepathic bond between their minds, linking them together forever. And, Rose, I want that. With you, I mean." The intensity in his eyes made her heart pound as she considered his words.

"So, what you're saying is…" she stopped, wrinkling her brow in slight confusion. "I'm not sure I get it," she confessed. "What's this bond thingy?"

He smiled, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. "Basically, it'd be like a permanent link between our minds. We've been linked before, and this would be like a lighter version of that, but all the time. Your telepathic abilities were enhanced by both the Bad Wolf and the time you spent on the TARDIS, so we've been able to share thoughts, feelings and images when we're in physical contact. The bond would mean we'd be able to do that all the time, even at a distance. I'm not sure exactly how far. I'd teach you to control it, so that we wouldn't always be hearing everything the other was thinking, but we would always have a basic awareness of each other's presence and emotions."

Rose's head reeled for a moment as she tried to process what he was telling her. She thought of the times he'd been in her mind and she in his, and how much she'd begun to crave that intimate contact, and how wonderful it always felt, as though his mind was caressing hers as tenderly as ever his hands caressed her body. She thought of having that, even a lighter version, all the time, and a huge smile blossomed on her face.

"You'd really want that with me?" she asked, her expression radiant.

His smile was even larger than hers, if that were possible. "Oh, you have no idea."

She flung her arms around his neck. "Yes, oh please!" she cried out, and he pulled back away from her, just enough to capture her lips with his own. His kiss was beyond merely passionate, full of love and hope and joy, and Rose found herself wanting to cry with happiness. Something inside told her that this was a huge question for him to ask, just as much so as the human question that required a ring.

They broke apart, breathless and grinning, and the Doctor jumped up from his seat on the sofa, releasing his grip on her hands.

"Well, now that I've done this the Gallifreyan way, I think I've got another question to ask," he said, and bounded into their bedroom, leaving Rose staring blankly after him, nonplussed. She heard him rustling around in the bedroom, and heard a drawer open and shut before he reappeared, clutching something small in his right hand.

Her heart began to race in anticipation. Was he really about to…

He was. As she stared breathlessly at him, he strode purposefully back across the living room and dropped to one knee in front of her, holding out the small, blue velvet box in his hand.

"Rose Tyler, we have crossed entire universes to be together, and if I had to, I would do it all again, just to hold you in my arms. I love you more than I ever thought possible, and I can't imagine spending one second of my life without you." He opened the box and revealed the most beautiful ring she'd ever seen in her life, a perfect princess cut diamond flanked by TARDIS blue sapphires, set in- was that _platinum? _ She couldn't hold back the gasp in her throat as she caught sight of it, glistening there in its bed of dark blue velvet. He grinned happily at her reaction, and met her eyes.

"Rose Tyler, will you marry me?"

Unable to speak, Rose reached out and seized his face, sealing their lips together in a hungry, passionate kiss. She prodded his lips with her tongue until he opened for her with a low groan, and she swept her tongue into his mouth, kissing him as deeply as she could. He remained passive and pliant against her for a moment, letting her dominate the kiss, then his own tongue rose to dance with hers and dove into her mouth, tracing the contours of her lips and teeth. She moaned quietly in the back of her throat, lacing her hands behind his head to hold him close and trailing her fingers through his hair as they both loved.

It wasn't until they were both dizzy from lack of oxygen that they finally broke apart, panting for air. When he could breathe again, he gave her his cheekiest grin.

"So, can I take that as a yes?"

"Yes," she laughed breathlessly, and his grin widened into the most joyful expression she'd ever seen on his or any other face. He reached out and took her left hand, pulling the ring out of the box and sliding it gently onto her third finger. They both admired it for a moment, glittering there like a star on her finger, and declaring to the world that they had chosen to spend the rest of their lives together. "It's beautiful," she said softly, tearing her eyes away from the ring to seek out his own, which were dark with desire.

"It looks good on you," he complimented; his voice low, and then reached for her again, kissing her in such a way that left absolutely no doubt where this was headed.

At the moment, the only unanswered question in the room was whether or not they would actually make it to their bedroom.

At the moment, neither one of them much cared.

**Not going to lie to you, I squealed like an obsessed fangirl writing this. It just made me smile.**

**Anyway, thanks for reading, and please review!**


	5. Chapter 5: The Sound of Bells

**I am sooo sorry this took so long, apparently I am utter rubbish at writing weddings. Anyway, here you go, and I hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Five: The Sound of Bells

Rose Tyler was about ready to scream.

"For the love of God, Mum, stop fussing! The dress is perfect, my hair is perfect, my makeup is perfect, you look perfect, _everything _is perfect, but if you don't chill I'm going to end up with your blood on my dress."

Jackie Tyler straightened from where she'd been kneeling to check Rose's hemline for the eighty-fifth time and sniffed, torn between offended and emotional. "I just want everything to be perfect on my daughter's wedding day, is that too much to ask?"

Rose's eyes softened as she realized that her mother was trying to hide her emotional state by fussing about. After all, it's not every day that your only daughter gets married. To an alien, no less. "Of course that's not too much to ask, Mum, but everything _is_ perfect, I promise. It's a beautiful wedding, thank you so much."

Jackie sniffed again. "Well, it's not easy planning a wedding like this in less than ten months, do you know how many favors your Dad and I had to call in to make this happen? Why couldn't you have just waited another few months, so it wouldn't be so rushed?"

Rose rolled her eyes. They'd been through this a thousand times. "We told you, we wanted to be married before we left in the TARDIS, and she's ready for us now. We want to spend our honeymoon among the stars," she said, a dreamy smile crossing her lips as she thought of the list of romantic cities, planets and times her Doctor had planned for them once they got going. Of course, in a parallel universe, it was anyone's guess as to whether or not those places would turn out to be what they were hoping, but that was half the fun. "Besides, we've both been waiting for this for years."

"Well, I still reckon you're mad, the pair of you. Why wouldn't you want to spend your honeymoon on Earth, somewhere like-"

"Mum, we've been through that as well, and I'm not having this conversation for the thousandth time. Besides, you got the wedding together, and you knew we were going to leave as soon as the TARDIS was ready. Don't worry, I promise we'll come back and visit you, and I won't let him leave a year between visits, okay?"

Jackie sighed. "I guess I just got used to having you around again. I'm going to miss you, Rose," she said, and gently ran a hand through one of Rose's picture-perfect curls, a wistful expression on her face.

"I know, Mum, and I love you. I'll miss you too." Rose reached out and hugged her mother tightly. Eager as she was to be traveling with the Doctor again, a small part of her was reluctant to leave her family and Torchwood behind. Still, Torchwood had the number of their super phones in case of an interplanetary emergency, and they'd visit often. Plus, she'd have the Doctor, which made it a very easy choice.

As the two women pulled apart, there was a knock on the door, which opened a second later to reveal Jake.

"You ladies ready? It's about that time," he asked.

Jackie looked at her daughter. "You ready?"

Rose smiled. "I've been ready forever."

And it seemed like she had. From the very first time they met, when he'd taken her hand and told her to run, she'd been in love with the Doctor. She'd instantly seen through the gruff, harsh exterior to the battered, lonely, magnificent man beneath, and every second she'd traveled with him had only made her fall more and more in love with him. The incredible kindness he'd shown her, and the million things he'd done for her and every other creature they'd encountered, his courage, compassion, selflessness and manic enthusiasm for life had drawn her to him from the very beginning, and she couldn't imagine her life without him. After he'd regenerated, she'd had her doubts at first, but it hadn't taken him long to win her over. (It certainly hadn't hurt that he was beyond gorgeous, as though someone had reached down and handed her the man of her dreams.) After she'd gotten used the new face, she'd fallen even more in love with him, dreaming wistfully of the day when he might return her feelings. Now, she was marrying him in a beautiful dream wedding planned by her mother, but that wasn't what made it perfect. No, she would have been just as happy in jeans and an old T-shirt, in someone's basement with no flowers or guests, just as long as her Doctor was there.

The past few months had been interesting, to say the least. Jackie had driven both Rose and the Doctor to distraction with her elaborate wedding plans, to the point where they seriously considered eloping. It seemed they could barely get through a day without half a dozen phone calls about flowers, dresses, locations and caterers, and all sorts of nonsense. It had gotten so bad that Rose had begun to worry that her Doctor was going to bolt. To her relief, he had done nothing of the sort, and had kept his biting remarks to a minimum in her parents' presence. Perhaps he'd gotten some of Donna's old wedding fever in the metacrisis.

The other problem had been the paparazzi. The second word had leaked out that they were engaged, they had been inundated with reporters requesting an exclusive, and the tabloids had been full of nothing but speculative articles about them, their wedding, their relationship, everything. Some of the headlines hadn't been too bad, like "Vitex Heiress to Marry Real-Life Prince Charming," but some of them had been rather nasty. They'd called "James" a leech and accused him of marrying her for her father's money, speculated that she was pregnant, and brought up the old scandal of his sudden, mysterious appearance all over again, and Rose was getting very tired of seeing her own face on the cover of magazines. The Doctor hated it as much as she did, and truth be told, one of the reasons they were leaving Earth for their honeymoon was because they were tired of having to constantly look over their shoulders for idiots with cameras. They just wanted to go somewhere they could be themselves. The paparazzi would no doubt spend ages trying to figure out where they had gone, but Rose didn't much care.

Ruthlessly, Rose shoved all thoughts of the hectic past few months out of her head. She was getting married today, and she was determined not to let anything spoil the magic. She carefully gathered her long skirt in her hands so that she wouldn't trip on it, and followed Jake and her mother out to the rose garden on the Tyler estate.

When her mother had first suggested this location for the wedding, Rose had been rather reluctant, thinking that she would be hard-pressed to find anything more cliché. However, this estate was one of the few places in this world that really meant something to her, and not having the wedding in a cathedral (which had been Jackie's first suggestion) had limited the guest list to the number of chairs that could be situated in the garden without damaging the roses. It also meant that they could deny access to the paparazzi, since they were on private property. Plus, Rose had to admit that the flowers looked lovely.

They met her father downstairs, and he smiled as he held out his arm for her to take.

"You ready, Rose?" he asked.

"More than," she replied, smiling widely. The two of them waited for a few moments while Jake and Jackie headed out, corralling Tony and making sure he didn't drop the pillow with the rings on it. When the music changed to the bridal processional she'd picked out, Rose and Pete walked forward and made their way down the aisle.

The weather was perfect, with scarcely a cloud in the sky, and the roses around her were in full bloom, filling the air with their subtle perfume, and the entire setting looked like something out of a fairy tale, but Rose didn't even notice. From the moment he came into her line of sight, all she could see was her Doctor, waiting for her at the end of the aisle, wearing an expression that could only be described as radiant. Her lips widened into a smile that matched his, and they locked eyes as she drew closer, the walk seeming to take forever.

Finally, they reached the end of the aisle, and Pete kissed her cheek and placed her hand in the Doctor's, who gave it a squeeze. Hand in hand, they turned to face the minister.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony…" Rose lost the thread of the minister's words as she looked up and met the Doctor's eyes, and he gave her that special smile that she knew was reserved only for her.

"Do you, James Noble Tyler, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, for as long as you both shall live?"

His eyes softened into pools of melted chocolate. "I do," he said softly.

"And do you, Rose Marion Tyler, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, for as long as you both shall live?"

"I do," she affirmed, her own eyes shining as brightly as they had that day on Satellite Five, only this time with pure joy.

The minister said something about rings and vows, to which Rose paid no attention, and then her Doctor took a ring from the pillow her little brother was holding and turned to face her again.

"Rose, my beautiful, perfect, brilliant Rose, I could spent the rest of my life talking here and still never be able to truly tell you what you mean to me. From the moment I met you, you took the broken, lonely man I was and taught me how to live again. You reminded me that there was beauty in this universe, and you made me a better man. I love you more than everything else in the universe combined. I feel so incredibly lucky to have this chance with you, and I swear that I will make the most of every second we have together, and love you to the end of Time."

As he tenderly slipped the wedding band onto her finger to meet her engagement ring, she couldn't help but notice the suspicious hint of moisture in his eyes before he rapidly blinked it away. She squeezed his hand and smiled at him, then reached for the other wedding band on the pillow.

"When I was a little girl, I didn't really believe in love at first sight. But from the very first time I laid eyes on you and you took my hand, I knew I'd been wrong. You showed me the wonders of the universe, and made me into the person I am today. Whatever challenges that come our way, I know we can overcome them, just as long as we're together. I love you more than life itself, and I can't imagine a second of my life without you." She took her Doctor's left hand, and gently slid the ring onto his third finger, her hands trembling slightly. He held both of her hands in his as they turned their heads slightly to face the minister once more.

"And so, by the power vested in me, I hereby pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

The Doctor reached out one hand and tucked her hair behind her left ear, then leaned in and whispered to her, the most beautiful, melodic, lyrical words she'd ever heard in her life. She felt tears prick her eyes as she instantly realized what he'd said to her. He'd told her this was coming, of course, but nothing could have prepared her for this.

He'd just told her his true name.

He drew back slightly, just enough to meet her eyes for a fraction of a second, and then leaned in again to kiss her. The infinite tenderness in that kiss nearly shattered her, and she reached up to wrap her arms around his neck as his found her waist.

He broke the kiss far too soon for her taste, and once he did, her ears registered the sound of clapping and cheering from the small crowd of guests. He gave her his biggest, cheekiest grin, which she returned with a radiant smile of her own.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to present to you Dr. and Mrs. James and Rose Tyler!"

0-0-0-0-0

A slow, romantic love song drifted through the air, the soft summer breeze rustling through the trees and rose bushes, and the wedding reception was bathed in starlight. Rose and her Doctor stood on the small platform serving as a dance floor, their arms wrapped around each other and oblivious to all else in the world. They swayed gently in time with the music, holding each other tightly and reveling in this moment. They had survived the ridiculous traditions, blush inducing toasts, obnoxious wedding photographer and were finally married. Rose snuggled against the Doctor's chest, and he tucked her head under his chin.

"So, love, was this day everything you always wanted?" he asked, so softly that no one else would ever have heard it.

She smiled slightly. "Well, aside from my mother trying to be Mumzilla with the preparations, and Jake insisting on telling _that _story, I'd say this day was very nearly perfect."

He frowned. "Nearly perfect? What was wrong?"

Rose mentally kicked herself for bringing this up, but now that she had, she knew she had to finish what she'd started. "Well, there are really only a few things that could have made this day any better. Or rather, a few people. I just wish Mickey and Jack and Donna and the others could have been here."

He sighed. "I know. I miss them too. Though, I think I can live with the fact that Captain Jack wasn't here to make a toast. Jake's was bad enough, can you imagine what Jack would have come up with?" he said with a shudder, trying to cheer her up a bit.

It worked. "I don't even want to guess," she giggled. "Can you imagine Donna and my mum going at it over the wedding?"

The Doctor blanched. "It would have been a battle to end all battles," he agreed, a small smile playing over the corners of his lips.

They carried on like that for a few minutes, imagining what each of their beloved friends would have been like at their wedding, and wishing they could see them again. If they could have, Rose knew she would have asked Donna to stand up for her, and Martha to be a bridesmaid, and Jack and Mickey would have been groomsmen. Rose felt a pang of sadness rush through her at the thought of their lost friends, but she shoved it down. She had her Doctor, and that was all she really needed.

As the evening began to wear on, Rose began to feel a bit antsy. She wanted to be gone, off to the brand new TARDIS and all the adventures that awaited them. A single glance at her Timelord told her that he felt the same way, so they said farewell to her parents and to Jake, and slipped off into the night before anyone could notice they were leaving. The last thing they wanted was to have a crowd watching them fly off in the TARDIS. The fewer people that knew about the timeship, the better.

They slipped into the quiet little copse of trees, and both of them grinned hugely at the sight of the beautiful ship standing tall and proud, waiting for them. She looked just like the old one, a big blue police box, but newer, the paint brighter and the window panels cleaner. They grinned at each other, and the Doctor reached out a hand to open the door. Rose started to walk inside, but he stopped her with a gentle hand on her shoulder and a twinkle in his eyes. Before she registered what was happening, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold. He closed the door behind them with his foot, and together they stared in awe at the magnificent ship.

It looked very much like the console room that they were both used to, the tall, winding coral struts and slightly raised control platform, with the main corridor branching out into the bowels of the ship. The light seemed brighter, though and the room had a brand-new feeling to it that the other TARDIS had not. As they gazed around, delighted, they both felt the gentle, welcoming brush of the TARDIS against their minds, and smiled happily at each other.

"Welcome home, Rose," the Doctor said softly as he gently lowered her feet to the ground again.

"And you, my Doctor," she replied, her eyes shining. He made that adorable happy sound in his throat that she loved so much, and traced his fingers through her hair, framing her face in his hands. Their eyes locked, and for a moment, they simply gazed at each other, smiling happily, but then he lowered his lips to her and kissed her for all he was worth. Even as his lips caressed hers, she felt his mind reaching for her, and she reached back, welcoming him with all her heart.

When their minds were so closely entwined that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began, she felt him speaking to her, silently within her mind.

_"Are you ready? For the bonding, I mean?"_

_ "Yes," _she replied, just as silently, and felt him smile, his pure joy rushing into her mind like a tidal wave and matched by her own. She felt him reaching further within her mind and binding them together, and couldn't help but gasp slightly at the feeling. She suddenly realized the difference between this and the joining of the minds they'd often shared. Then, they had seen into each other's minds. Now, they were within each other's souls.

As her Doctor bound them tightly together, for a moment she could see the world as he did, the golden timelines that encompassed all the possibilities in the universe. She watched, stunned, as the lines that were tied to her and to her Doctor rose from the tapestry of light and twined together, twisting into one unbreakable strand. Tears of joy pricked at her eyes as he wordlessly showed her what that meant: That no matter where they were, what they did, or what the universe threw at them, they would always be together, for the rest of their lives. Nothing could tear them apart.

As their hearts, minds, and souls twisted into one, Rose felt an incredible surge of desire race through her, and clung to her Doctor as her knees weakened, pulling his mouth back to her own. He went willingly, and kissed her with that incredible rapport still strung between them, his own desire echoing in her mind as well, magnifying hers. Without a single word needing to be spoken, they instantly agreed that the stars could wait, and the Doctor pulled away from her just long enough to throw them into the Vortex so they wouldn't be disturbed. Hand in hand, they quickly made their way down the corridor to the bedroom, intent on celebrating the best day of their lives.

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**


	6. Chapter 6: Jackals of Xenon

**Yikes, I'm sorry I took so long with this chapter. I spent Christmas with my family, and they wouldn't leave me alone for five minutes, let alone long enough to finish this.**

**Anyway, I was getting a bit of an overdose of sugar, and decided that our heroes needed some actual adventure. Enjoy!**

**Oh, and someone asked if the title to this story was a reference to Phantom of the Opera, the song "All I Ask Of You." The answer is yes, yes it is. If you haven't heard it, you should go listen to the song, and think of Rose and the Doctor. **

Chapter Six: Jackals of Xenon 

As the TARDIS rattled through the Vortex to their destination, Rose and her Doctor shared a look of sheer delight. It felt beyond wonderful to be doing this again, and Rose grinned happily at the familiar sight of her Doctor dancing around the console, flipping switches, twisting dials, and pressing buttons. Oh, how she'd missed this.

"So go on then, where are we going?" she asked, speaking loudly over the noise of the engines.

He grinned at her. "Someplace we've never been before."

They landed seconds later with a jolt, which threw them both to the floor and had them laughing hysterically, just like always. He bounced to his feet and gave her a hand up, then scampered over to the coral strut where he'd tossed his trench coat. He was wearing a brown pinstriped suit with a blue shirt and swirly tie, and looked exactly as he always had, and for a split second, it almost seemed to Rose that those years of hell and the year and a half of "normal" life on Earth had never been. Now, it was back to being just her and the Doctor, in the TARDIS, just as it should be. In that instant, it seemed that the only difference was the fact that they now wore wedding rings.

The Doctor threw on his coat and grabbed her hand. "Come on, Rose Tyler. Allons-y!"

Laughing with delight, she let him pull her out of the TARDIS, incredibly eager to see this new place. They came to a halt outside and closed the door behind them, and Rose stared in awe at the magnificent sight that greeted her.

The TARDIS had landed on a hill outside an enormous, beautiful city that looked rather futuristic to her. It was difficult to see much of the architecture from their current vantage point, but she was pretty sure that the hovercars were a good sign that she was right. For a moment, she simply let the joy of this new sight wash over her, then she turned to her Doctor. He caught her look and began telling her about this place without waiting for her to ask.

"We're in the year 3568, and this is the planet Xenon, a human colony founded about two hundred years ago. The city you see down there is called Ravenna, and it's widely considered to be one of the most romantic places in the galaxy. It's an extremely popular honeymoon destination. Well, it was in the other universe, and it seems to be much the same, at least from here. They've got gorgeous architecture, and splendid art and music. Some of the finest musicians in the galaxy perform here, and there's both music to sit and listen to and music to dance to, as well as theatre and opera. They also attract some of the finest chefs, so the cuisine is spectacular, and it's also considered something of a fashion capital for this era, so there's plenty of shopping for you to do, love. So, what do you think?"

Rose was stunned speechless for a moment. "Oh, it's perfect," she gushed a moment later when she regained her voice. She bounced up and down for a few seconds, just like she had that day on New Earth. She couldn't believe she was finally back where she belonged, and she felt in that second that every dream she'd ever had had come true.

The Doctor grinned at the sight of her bouncing. He'd missed this so much over the last few years. Martha and Donna had been wonderful companions, interested and enthusiastic, but nothing matched his Rose's pure, unadulterated joy and delight. A powerful wave of emotion swept over him, and he pulled Rose into his arms, swinging her around in a circle. She laughed in delight at his exuberance, and he found himself laughing aloud as well. Eventually, he put her down, but he didn't release his hold on her, proceeding to kiss her senseless. Since even he had no words to describe what he was feeling, he simply tugged lightly on the bond between them, showing her his pure joy without words. A split second later, he felt her own, nearly identical emotions echoing back at him, and he pulled away from her lips to grin at her.

"Come on!" he urged her happily, and they raced down the hill, hand in hand.

0-0-0-0-0

As they entered the city, Rose stared around in awe at the beautiful place. The day was leaning on toward dusk, and silver lights were beginning to come on in every corner of the city, twinkling like stars all around her. The buildings seemed to be inspired by the architecture of Renaissance Italy, with the gorgeous domed roofs and arched windows, but rather than red roofs, they were a soft shade of blue, and the walls of the buildings were more grey than cream. The streets were paved with what looked like cobblestones, but perfectly even and easy to walk on, not like some of the streets she'd seen. Indeed, the ground seemed almost to caress her feet, and she felt that she could walk around all day here without her feet getting tired. About fifteen feet above their heads, sleek hovercars raced around in neatly ordered traffic patterns, something which impressed her almost as much as the beautiful city. Having been to several cities with similar transportation in her travels with the Doctor, she knew how difficult it was to coordinate that kind of aerial transport.

The newlyweds wandered leisurely through the city, admiring the buildings and stopping occasionally in the little tourist shops that lined the street they'd come in on. All the while, the Doctor gabbled on, telling her what he knew about this colony from the times he'd visited it in the other universe, and from what she could tell, so far there seemed to be very few differences between the two. She wondered briefly if there were any other places that were largely the same in both universes, hoping that she and the Doctor might be able to revisit some of their old haunts.

As dusk turned to true night, the soft, silver-colored lights that glistened from every direction blossomed and turned the city into an ocean of light.

"Oh, this is gorgeous," Rose breathed as she gazed around in wonder.

He grinned down at her happily. "I'm glad you like it, and I'm glad it's so similar. Different universe and all, I was half afraid it would turn out to be a prison planet or something equally unsavory, and that just wouldn't be an appropriate destination for the first phase of our honeymoon," he said, waggling his eyebrows at her.

She raised her own eyebrows as she tore her gaze away from the magnificent city and focused on her equally magnificent husband. "Our honeymoon has phases?" she asked, catching her tongue in her teeth.

He scoffed. "I would hardly take you to just one place for our honeymoon, would I? I took you to more than a dozen places in the first week and a half that we traveled together; it'd hardly be right if we just went to one place and sat there for a week. We're the Stuff of Legends, and our honeymoon should be the same. Besides, I've got _plans_ for you, Mrs. Tyler," he added, his voice dropping into that low register that he knew turned her insides to mush. "Plans that require trips to more than one time and place."

His eyes smoldered, and her breath quickened as she met his gaze. Completely forgetting that they were in a public place, she reached out and laced her fingers into his hair, insistently tugging his head down to hers. He met her halfway with a smug little smirk that she proceeded to kiss right off his face.

"Oi, lovebirds, get a room, will ya?"

Startled, they broke apart, looking around for the heckler, and found a friendly looking older man who was grinning at them.

"Care to recommend a place?" the Doctor asked cheekily, both he and Rose grinning back at him.

The fellow chuckled. "You newlyweds?" he asked.

Rose and the Doctor shared one of those melting looks. "Yes, we are," the Doctor replied, but his eyes were on her.

"Congratulations, then, and you should try The Forum over on High Street. Gorgeous place, I saved for months so I could take my lovely lady there for our wedding night. It's one of the most famous hotels in the city. They say the Princess of Valestra herself stayed there on her honeymoon."

"Sounds good to me. Rose?"

She smiled. "Sounds lovely."

"Thanks, then."

"You're quite welcome, young fellow. You two have a good time, and you make sure you treat your lady right, boy," the old man said, giving him a mock glare.

Rose choked and tried not to burst into laughter at the rather remarkable occurrence of someone calling the 900-year-old Doctor "boy." The Doctor just smiled and brushed it off. He'd heard similar things before while wearing this face.

"That I will," he assured the old man, and held out his arm for Rose to take. She placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, smiling up at him. They got directions from the friendly old man, and set off in search of the famous fancy hotel.

0-0-0-0-0

The old man watched them go with a smile on his face. "_Ah, young love," _he thought, and turned to go back into his shop. As he went, his good mood became tinged with a hint of irritation at the feeling of light-headedness that crept over him. He sighed, frustrated. Getting old was no fun at all. Maybe he needed to start listening to his daughter's constant nags about taking care of himself. Just as he reached the door of his little shop, the feeling suddenly intensified, accompanied by an electrical sort of tingle down his arms, and then everything went black.

0-0-0-0-0

"Hello, I'm Doctor Tyler and this is my wife, Rose. I don't suppose you've got a honeymoon suite available?"

As the smartly dressed Zircarian behind the counter checked the registry, Rose leaned into her husband's side, a bit taken aback by the way he'd introduced himself.

"_Doctor Tyler?" _she asked silently through their bond.

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer. _"Why not? It is my name," _he replied. _"Well, one of my names, anyway."_

Rose smiled, and he grinned back at her. _"You know, Doctor Tyler, I don't think I ever got around to telling you this before, but your name, your Gallifreyan name, I mean, is absolutely beautiful."_

She felt a soft, loving pulse of affection and adoration through their bond as he answered her. _"Why, thank you, my love."_

_ "Even if it is a bit hard to pronounce," _she teased lightly. He smiled, far from offended.

_"You'll get the hang of it," _he assured her.

Just then, the clerk cleared her throat to get their attention. "Excuse me, Doctor Tyler?"

The newlyweds both blushed slightly as they realized that while they'd been standing there staring at each other, lost in their telepathic conversation, the clerk had been trying to get their attention for a few minutes.

"Yes, sorry, you were saying?"

The clerk's odd facial features made her emotions difficult to read, but she seemed unflustered by their inattention. Well, this hotel did seem to cater to newlyweds, so she was probably just very used to it.

"We do have one of the bridal suites available. How many nights do you wish to stay with us?" she asked politely.

"Oh, a few, some, not really sure, to honest. Don't know yet if we'll like the place, might decide to go somewhere else. Like to have a bit of adventure." The Doctor babbled for a few moments before Rose shut him up with her "you're being rude" glare.

"Sorry about him, he's a bit rude sometimes. Plus, he doesn't like to plan anything in advance, likes to make it up as he goes along," Rose told the clerk.

"More fun that way," he added, grinning cheekily. Rose rolled her eyes.

"Why don't we say three nights for now, and if we decide we want to stay longer, we'll make additional arrangements. That okay?" Rose asked.

The clerk's mouth twitched as if she was hiding a smile, but she was too professional to crack her façade. Instead, she checked them in, took the credit stick the Doctor gave her, handed over keys to the room, and filled them in on the lovely dining and spa facilities offered by the hotel. She them gave them directions to find their room, and wished them a pleasant stay at The Forum. Rose and the Doctor bid her a friendly farewell, and headed off up the stairs, giggling happily for no real reason, just happy to be together.

When they found the bridal suite up on the top floor, the Doctor opened the door with a huge grin, then swept Rose up into his arms and carried her inside, ignoring her squeal of protest.

"Put me, down, you- mmph!" Rose exclaimed, as he leaned down and captured her lips. Instantly, all other thoughts zoomed out of her head as she kissed him back. The passion in the kiss rapidly escalated, and the Doctor carried her over and gently deposited her in the middle of the enormous canopied bed on the left side of the room. He joined her within seconds, and resumed the kiss, threading his fingers through her soft blonde hair and gently teasing her lips with the tip of his tongue.

_"No more talking, my love." _

0-0-0-0-0

A pretty young redheaded woman walked through the market three streets over, her mind a million miles away. She was tired of letting her boyfriend push her around, and had made up her mind to dump him, and was currently trying to decide how best to go about doing so. As she concentrated on her conundrum, she barely noticed the electrical tingle that raced down her arms just before she blacked out.

0-0-0-0-0

Rose could not remember ever being more comfortable in her entire life. The sheets were made of some material she didn't recognize, but they caressed her bare skin like a whisper, softer than silk. The plush mattress was perfectly soft, as were the pillows she lay on. But best of all, her Doctor was curled intimately close behind her, spooned against her back, with his arm around her waist, his lips against her shoulder, and his mind still sleepily caressing hers. She sighed in contentment. Surely, life didn't get any better than this.

They both dozed contentedly for a while, before growling stomachs called them back to the real world. She turned in his arms and the Doctor gave her a sweet, languid kiss before they both sat up.

"What time is it?" she asked, and then sighed as he dropped his head to plant a kiss on her bare shoulder.

"20:16, local time," he murmured against her skin, causing a shudder to race through her body. She closed her eyes, enjoying his feather light caresses, and another soft sigh escaped her lips.

"Would you like to order room service, or shall we dress up and go out to dinner?" he asked after a while, lifting his head to meet her eyes.

Rose considered for a moment. If they went out, she'd get to dress up for her Doctor, and she'd seen a truly lovely restaurant two blocks over that she really wanted to try. On the other hand, if they ordered room service, she could stay curled up with her Doctor in this wonderful soft bed. Both options sounded very appealing, and it took a moment of pondering before she made up her mind.

"Let's go out," she decided. "We can try that little place we saw on the way in."

He smiled. "Your wish is my command," he said, and kissed her lips briefly.

They slid out of bed, and Rose pulled on the Doctor's discarded shirt, grinning at the pouty expression on his face.

"You can have it back in a minute, love," she said with a soft giggle, and padded over to the door, where she'd dropped her bigger-on-the-inside rucksack, in which she'd packed some clothing for the excursion. She picked it up and opened it, pulling out the garment bag she'd thrown in for her Doctor and handing it to him. He winked, and bowed mockingly as he took it, and she leaned over to kiss him lightly before slipping into the enormous bathroom to change.

She emerged a while later, wearing a sexy, dark burgundy cocktail dress that fell to just below her knees and a pair of black ballet flats (life with the Doctor had long since cured her of the desire to ever wear heels). The dress had only one shoulder strap, and the design was deceptively simple, just a nice, full skirt and a small flower on the single strap, but she was quite pleased with the overall effect. She found her Doctor gazing out the window at the lovely city below, dressed in the black suit she'd forced him to buy on their first shopping trip, along with a shirt that matched her dress and a black tie. She grinned, realizing that he must have snuck a peek at the color of her dress and picked out a shirt to match.

"You know, peeking in my head like that _might _be considered cheating," she teased lightly, but he just flashed her his cheekiest grin and ignored her comment.

"You look ravishing, my Rose," he complimented her, and closed the distance between them in just a few long-legged strides. He placed his hands on her waist and leaned down to kiss her hungrily. She rested her hands on his arms and returned his kiss with enthusiasm until they broke apart, both breathless. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment as they both tried to get their breath back, then he pulled away with a grin.

"Would you care to accompany me to dinner, Mrs. Tyler?" he asked, gallantly holding out his arm for her to take.

Laughing slightly, she placed her hand on his arm and let him tuck it into the crook of his elbow. "Why, yes, Dr. Tyler, I would."

0-0-0-0-0

The little restaurant that had caught Rose's eye earlier turned out to be a magnificent choice, offering an eclectic and delicious menu, some of which would have been right at home in a 21st century Chinese restaurant, and some of which Rose had never seen before. Feeling adventurous, she got the Doctor to help her pick out something new, and was not disappointed. While it looked odd, the bluish sauce on her paper thin slices of meat and the unfamiliar vegetables were delicious, quite possibly the most delicious thing she'd ever eaten in her life.

They were chattering happily, sharing bites of their meals and enjoying themselves immensely when the quiet, peaceful night was shattered by an ear-splitting scream.

Before anyone else in the restaurant had time to blink, Rose and the Doctor were out of their chairs and racing in the direction of the scream. It came from just outside and to the right, from a pretty Asian woman about Rose's age. She was crying, and looking around in a panic.

Without hesitation, Rose darted up to the girl and took her hand gently. "What's wrong, what happened?" she asked, trying to meet the girl's frantic eyes.

"He- he's gone! He just disappeared!" the girl stammered out. "Vanished, right before my eyes!" She burst into hysterical sobs, and Rose gently pulled the girl to her, letting her cry into her shoulder. She heard the whirring of the sonic screwdriver and looked to the Doctor for an explanation.

"Doctor?"

He frowned. "I'm picking up some major residual energy traces around here. And- whoa! Can you taste that? That metallic tang?"

She sniffed, and realized what he meant. "Teleport of some kind?" she asked, still holding the other girl comfortingly.

"Yes," he confirmed, and changed settings on the sonic. He pressed the button again, and his frown deepened when nothing happened. "Someone is blocking the signal. I can't reverse the teleport. That would take some serious technology…" he continued in technobabble, rambling on, and Rose stopped listening, turning her attention to the crying girl. Sometimes, her Doctor needed to talk things out to himself in order to figure out what was going on, but he didn't really need her to listen. She was going to try and find out what she could from this girl.

It took quite some time to get her to calm down enough to answer questions, and all the while, the Doctor kept muttering to himself behind her. When the girl was coherent, Rose began to question her gently, starting slow.

"I'm Rose, and this's the Doctor. What's your name, then?"

The trembling girl hiccupped, but managed to answer. "I'm Hoshi."

"That's real pretty, Hoshi. Who was your friend?"

She sniffed, and clearly fought down another wave of tears, trying to pull herself together enough to help. "He's my fiancée, Simon."

"Your fiancée? Congratulations," Rose said with a gentle smile, trying to get her to relax. "When's the wedding?"

"N-next month," Hoshi said, with a weak smile. "We were just ordering the flowers at this place up the road."

Rose smiled again. "That sounds lovely. The Doctor and I just got married too. We're on our honeymoon." She paused as Hoshi smiled at her, then took a deep breath and went on. "Hoshi, can you tell me exactly what you saw? Was there anything weird right before Simon disappeared? Any kind of warning at all?"

Hoshi gulped, but remained in control of herself, and Rose felt ridiculously proud of the girl. Clearly, she was on the edge of a breakdown, but she was keeping it together through sheer force of will. "I- I don't think so. Wait, there was this really faint blue light radiating from his skin for a split second, and then he just vanished." She gave a broken, bitter laugh. "And to think I made fun of Kelly's stories."

That got the Doctor's instant attention. "What stories?" he asked, looking Hoshi in the eyes.

"I always thought they were stupid, just a scare tactic to try and keep me from walking the streets alone at night. Nothing ever happens here, but Kelly grew up on Ceti III, and they've got a big crime problem." Hoshi stopped, apparently realizing she was babbling, and took a deep breath before getting back to the point. "But she said that sometimes people go missing, just disappear without a trace and are never seen again. Kelly said they were taken by slavers and sold to the Tirraquan system, and everybody knows what that means."

Rose and the Doctor shared a look of non-comprehension. "Actually, we don't. What does that mean?" the Doctor asked.

Hoshi gave them an incredulous look. "Oh, come, on, where have you been living? Everyone knows what the Tirraquans are like."

"Well, not us, so go on then," Rose encouraged her, trying not to get annoyed at her tone.

"Well, they buy slaves from everyone, their entire economy is built on the backs of slaves. The Imperial Senate's been trying to convince them to stop, but since they're not part of the Empire, there's not much they can do, just set up a trade boycott and close the borders, which they did ten years back. I think they were hoping that the blow to their trade would help convince them to consider emancipation, but they didn't seem to care much. Anyway, they take off-worlders and people who've racked up major debt and sell them into slavery, hard labor, dangerous mining operations, you name it. And if you're unlucky enough to be pretty…"

Rose and the Doctor both grimaced at the thought. "And your friend thinks that the missing people are being taken by the Tirraquan slaving rings?" the Doctor sought to confirm.

Hoshi nodded. "She said that it happened all the time when she was on Ceti III. That's such a rough planet that they didn't even try to hide it much, apparently. The local authorities there are kind of a joke."

"What else does your friend Kelly say about these disappearances, the slavers, anything?" he asked, his frown creasing his forehead as he tried to make sense of what was going on. Back in the other universe, the Tirraquan system had been a slum, sure, but they weren't capable of this sort of widescale slaving operation. They didn't have the resources or the organization to pull it off, being far too concerned with stabbing each other in the back.

Hoshi also frowned, trying to think. "I don't really know. I didn't really take her seriously. I mean, stuff like that doesn't happen here, not on Xenon. We've got the lowest crime rate in the Empire. I always just figured we were safe here."

"That's probably what the jackals were hoping for. Come to a place where the people feel safe, complacent, and they don't take as many precautions. Easy pickings," the Doctor spat, and Rose could see the Storm beginning to brew in his eyes. She reached out and placed a hand on his arm, squeezing gently and drawing his attention to her. As their eyes met, she sent a pulse of love and support along their bond, and he gave her a weak smile in return, covering her hand with his.

"I think we should talk to Kelly about this, don't you think, Doctor? Get a bit more of the story?" Rose suggested softly.

The Doctor nodded, but Hoshi shook her head. "You can't," she said softly. "She's dead, died in a boating accident two years ago."

The Doctor sighed in frustration. "Is there anyone else you can think of who might know a bit more about this? We're going to help you get Simon back, but we need some more information."

Hoshi bit her lip and her brow furrowed in thought. After a moment, though, she sighed and shook her head. "I can't think of anyone. Just about everyone laughed at her for being paranoid; 'bout the only person I can think of who didn't was her husband, and he died in the same accident."

Rose and the Doctor shared a grimace. "Well, then we'll just have to work with what we have. Doctor, maybe the TARDIS can trace and lock on to the teleport signals, at least tell us where they're coming from."

The Doctor grinned at her. "Rose Tyler, I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're a genius," he said fondly, and swiftly planted a kiss on her forehead before leaping to his feet. He offered a hand to both ladies to help them up, and led the way to the TARDIS, his mind whirling at light speed while he tried to get as much information as possible out of Hoshi.

The little trio made it about halfway out of the city, with the Doctor leading and the two women following behind, Rose's arm draped comfortingly around Hoshi's shoulder, when the Doctor suddenly felt as though a knife had sliced through his mind. Dimly, he heard Hoshi gasp, as though from a great distance, but he paid absolutely no attention to her. Doubled over in pain and clutching his head, he staggered a few steps, searching for Rose, but she was nowhere to be seen. His heart clenched as he realized that the pain in his head had been hers, echoing though their bond, her mind crying out as she was rendered abruptly unconscious.

They had taken Rose.

His legs gave out as the pain intensified, and he fell to his knees with a cry, breathing hard. He dimly registered Hoshi trying to talk to him in a frantic voice, but he couldn't think about her right now. Right now, he had to regain control of himself, had to build up enough mental barriers so that he could function again. His Rose needed him.

After what seemed an eternity, when in truth was only a few minutes, he managed to organize his mind, and the pain receded to the point where he could think again. Anger and fury built in his heart as he thought of the people who had taken Rose from him, and he rose to his feet again in one fluid movement. As he did, Hoshi looked up at him, concerned, then gasped and recoiled when he met her eyes.

For within his eyes blazed the unchecked fury of the Oncoming Storm.

**Stay tuned!**

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**


	7. Chapter 7: Storm Warning

**Yeah, I know, I should be strung up for taking so long to update, especially with a cliffhanger. Family stuff happened, and then I had writer's block, etc. Thank you for being patient, and I hope this is worth the wait.**

**I also wanted to thank everyone who has favorite, followed, or reviewed this story. You guys are the best, and I really appreciate it.**

**Anyway, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Seven: Storm Warning

Rose's mind swam slowly and reluctantly to consciousness, her first awareness being of an intense, throbbing pain in her skull. Her limbs felt heavy, and she couldn't move, or even open her eyes. It seemed that every muscle in her body was completely immobilized. Gradually, she began to realize that someone was talking, someone with a rough, unpleasant voice that instantly got her hackles up.

"Shouldn't she be waking up now? Damn, I miss the Ticorans."

"Quit complaining, Desran. The Ticorans might recover from the trans-mat faster, but the humans sure are prettier."

"I don't care what they look like, Jorak. I just want to get my money."

The second voice snorted. "You should care. We get loads better money for the pleasure slaves than we do for the labor slaves. Just look at this girl, all golden haired and curvy. She'll be worth a fortune all by herself, never mind all the other lovelies we've got down in the cells."

Rose was liking the tone of this conversation less and less the more the two voices spoke. She wracked her brain, trying to figure out how she got here, and grew increasingly frustrated as she tried to organize her whirling thoughts. Suddenly, a flash of memory hit her, seemingly out of nowhere.

"_It's the trans-mat. Does your head in."_

Right. Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum had mentioned something about a trans-mat, which explained why she was having trouble focusing. She felt control beginning to return to her limbs, but remained perfectly still, trying to feign unconsciousness while she waited for her brain to start working again. Bits and bobs of her recent memories began to float to the surface of her mind: the wedding, the reception, the bonding, their wedding night, arriving on Xenon, the hotel, the restaurant, the scream, Hoshi, her story, heading back to the TARDIS… and then it all went black. She suppressed a groan as she realized in a rush what must have happened. While she and the Doctor had been heading back to the TARDIS to try and trace the source of the teleports and see if there really was a Tirraquan slaving ring operating on Xenon, they must have locked onto her and captured her as well. _Well, as my husband would say, many things about this are not good, _she thought, wryly.

"She really ought to be waking up, Jorak, human or no."

"She is awake. She's just faking it. Come on, girl, you might as well open your eyes. It won't do you any good to put it off."

Mentally, Rose swore, then reluctantly opened her eyes and dragged herself to her feet to get a look at her captors.

The two men were both tall and heavily muscled, and not human, judging by the odd, V-shaped ridge on their foreheads and the faintly green tint to their skin. One of them had his arms crossed and was leaning casually against the wall, and the second seemed to have been pacing restlessly, but was now standing still, glaring at her. They were dressed identically in tight-fitting black jumpsuits that seemed to be a sort of uniform, and both had blasters at their belts. They looked very much alike, and it seemed to Rose like they could easily be related.

And she instantly disliked them both.

The casual one chuckled at her glare. "You might want to tone down your expression, pretty one. Most of the buyers I know don't like to be glared at, and it might not end well for you if you don't learn."

Sparks seemed to fly from Rose's eyes then, and she saw red. "You're not selling me to anyone, you pigs. You have no idea what you're dealing with. I'm going to give you this one chance to let me and the other prisoners on this ship go, and get out of this system, or I promise you won't like what happens next."

Both men laughed outright at this. "And what are you going to do, little girl?"

Rose smirked. "Not me. My husband. When he finds you? You're going to wish you were never born. So take my advice and let me go, and find something constructive to do with your lives, because believe me, you don't want to cross paths with my husband when he's angry."

One of the men's smiles faltered at her words, and he glanced at his partner. The casual one, who was still leaning on the wall, smirked and gave a fake gasp of fright. "Did you hear that, Desran? Her man's going to beat us up. Oh, I'm scared now. Maybe we should do what she says, give up this life and start making bricks for baby hospitals." He snorted. "Did you really think that was going to scare me, little one?"

Rose's jaw clenched. "Fine. You don't want to listen to me? On your own head be it. But you better batten down the hatches, boys, 'cause the Storm's coming in."

Her opponent, who she assumed must be Jorak, just rolled his eyes. "Take her down to the cells, Desran, and make sure you don't damage the merchandise." He turned and walked out, still chuckling to himself.

The one he'd called Desran glared at her. "Now, little girl, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you come quietly. The hard way would be much less pleasant for you." He took three steps toward her, trying to intimidate her, and Rose narrowed her eyes. She'd seen lots more frightening things than him, but he was far stronger than her and could clearly overpower her in a physical contest. Then again, she might get lucky. Half of her Torchwood field training had been to handle situations just like this.

She set her jaw in a hard line, resolving to make his job as difficult as she could. From what Jorak had said, they didn't want to bruise her or cause any damage, probably because it would cut into the sale price. That might be just the advantage she needed.

"No, I'm not going to make this easy on you," Rose stated evenly, settling into a fighter's crouch that she hadn't needed for quite some time. Desran seemed to recognize the change in her body language, and drew something small from one of his pockets.

"So, you're a fighter, then? Well, I can't risk damaging your lovely body in a fight, so this will have to do."

Before Rose had a chance to react, he raised the little device in his hand and shot some sort of dart into her neck. She snatched it out and threw it away, but the damage was done. The small tranquilizer paralyzed her muscles, and she fell to the ground in a boneless heap. Desran smirked at her, and picked her up, slinging her over one shoulder.

"Jorak's got a point, girl. We're going to sell you as a pleasure slave no matter what you do, so you might as well make life easier on yourself and cooperate. If you don't, whoever buys you will probably decide to beat you into submission."

Whatever was in that tranquilizer had immobilized every muscle in her body, and she couldn't respond with the scathing retort that was on the tip of her tongue. Inwardly, she seethed, and tried to pay attention to the corridors she was being carried through. She eventually had to give up on that, though. The way Desran had her slung over his shoulder meant that the only thing she could really see was the floor, and her hair kept falling into her eyes.

After a while, she heard some sort of lock disengage, and her captor dumped her unceremoniously on the floor before turning and walking out, locking the door behind him. She tried desperately to move, to take stock of her surroundings, but she couldn't move so much as a finger. She heard someone shuffling in the room, and fought down her panic. In her current state, she had no chance of defending herself.

"Uh, miss? Are you alright?" A soft, lightly accented male voice asked gently. Rose fought unsuccessfully to reply.

"Shut up, you moron, can't you see they tranquilized her? She can't answer you. Help me get her up on the bench." The second voice was brusque and female, and ordered the other around with a no-nonsense attitude. Footsteps neared Rose's head, and then she felt someone scoop her up in their arms and carry her a few steps before gently placing her down on the afore-mentioned bench.

A moment later, a second male voice spoke up. "Back up, let me get a look at her." Another flurry of footsteps, and then she felt someone pull her hair away from her face so she could see. A young, handsome brunette man came into her line of sight, his face concerned. "Hello, miss. My name is Simon Devereaux, and I'm a medical student. I'm just going to see if you're okay." The young man checked her over with a calm, professional attitude, and his eyes lingered on the tiny puncture mark in her neck from the tranquilizer dart. "That looks just like the mark Scott had on his neck. If it's the same kind of dart, it should start wearing off any minute now, those don't last long. Then you can tell us who you are. Other than the tranq dart, you seem to be fine. So, introductions," he said, and rose so that the others in the cell could enter her line of sight. She saw another young man, this one blonde, tall and built like a body-builder, and a red-headed young woman.

"Well, I'm Aryn Callisto, nice to meet you, this is Scott Anderson, and you met Simon already. Welcome to Hell," the red-head said bitterly. "We're on a Tirraquan slaving ship, and the only reason we're still in orbit around Xenon is that they haven't filled their quota yet. Soon as they do, they'll cart us all off to the Tirraquan system and we'll never be heard from again."

_So, we're still in orbit, _Rose thought. _That's good, should be easier for the Doctor to find us._ She desperately wanted to reassure her cellmates and tell them that there was no way the Doctor would let the slavers get away with this, but she still couldn't speak.

"I'm sorry this happened to you, miss. Nobody expects anything untoward to happen on Xenon, and then all of a sudden, people are vanishing off the streets, kidnapped by slavers. I can't imagine how they're doing this without somebody noticing." Simon sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

A gloomy silence fell in the room as the prisoners contemplated their captivity. Aryn and Simon sank onto a bench much like the one Rose was laying on, and Scott leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, looking defeated.

Agonizingly slowly, Rose felt her muscles beginning to unlock as the tranquilizer wore off, until she was finally able to move and speak again. Stiffly, she sat up on the edge of the cot, and was met by three pairs of eyes, all fixed on her.

"Well, my name's Rose Tyler, nice to meet you all. Simon, are you engaged to a girl named Hoshi?"

He stared at her, stunned. "Yes, how the hell do you know that?"

"Because I met her, right after they got you. When you disappeared, she screamed, and me and my husband heard her and went to check it out. She told us about you, and we were going to help her find you."

"Is she alright?" Simon asked softly.

"She was when I saw her."

"Good." He paused, and a look of despair came over his face. "I can't believe I'm never going to see her again. God… I'm supposed to be getting married next month, and now I'm going to be a slave somewhere on Tirraqua."

"No, you're not." Rose stated firmly, and her three cellmates stared at her in shock.

"Maybe you haven't noticed, Rose, but we're locked in a cell on a Tirraquan slaving ship and no one down on Xenon even knows we're missing. There's no way to break out of this cell, and believe me, I've tried, and no way for anyone to come and rescue us because they don't even know we're gone," Aryn snapped, glaring at Rose, who just grinned at her.

"Yeah, but someone does know we're missing," she said.

"I don't think Simon's fiancée really counts," Scott said condescendingly. "No offense, man."

Rose shook her head. "I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about my husband. He's called the Doctor, and he'll tear this system apart if he has too, to find me. He'll get us out of this, and then he and I will bring down this entire operation." Her words were confidant, and she spoke with a surety born of long experience. Every single time she found herself in a situation like this, the Doctor came to rescue her. Every time the Doctor was in trouble, she rescued him. That's just how it was.

Scott snorted derisively. "And how exactly will he know how to find us, hmm? Even the authorities on Xenon don't know about this place. If they did, they'd blast it out of the sky. So how is one man supposed to be able to help us?"

Rose smirked. "You don't know him, so I'll forgive your skepticism, but there is nothing in the universe that can keep him and me apart. Now, if you'll all just hush a minute, I'm going to try and reach him. We've got this telepathic bond, so I should be able to talk to him, but it's still pretty new to me, so I'll have to concentrate."

"You've got a telepathic bond? But you look human…" Aryn trailed off, perplexed.

"I am human, but he's not. Now shush, don't distract me." Rose watched them for a moment to see if they would follow her direction, and while they still looked skeptical, they kept quiet. Satisfied, she settled into a comfortable position on the bench and closed her eyes, reaching out with her mind.

_ "Doctor?"_

0-0-0-0-0

Back on Xenon, the Doctor was pacing around the center console of the TARDIS, his face an impassive mask as he waited impatiently for the TARDIS to finish the scan she was running, looking for Rose's bio-signature. He'd also plugged the sonic screwdriver into another port on the console, and another screen on the TARDIS was running a trace on the teleportation technology based on the scans he'd taken in the street with the sonic. While his ship ran those scans, he ruthlessly grilled young Hoshi for every single detail of her friend's stories about the Tirraquans, and grew increasingly frustrated at how little she knew. The girl was perched on the jump seat, looking uncomfortable and a bit afraid, but he had more important things to worry about than her. Until he found Rose, nothing else mattered.

The console beeped, signaling the completion of one of the scans, and he instantly turned to it, reading the results. A moment later, he cursed long and fluently in Gallifreyan and kicked the console in frustration. The TARDIS couldn't locate Rose's bio-signature anywhere on the planet. He felt the ship whine slightly in the back of his head, and placed a hand on the console, sending her a silent apology. He knew the ship was just as worried about Rose as he was. He had the ship run another scan, this time widening the search pattern to include the skies above Xenon, and the entire system. Teleportation technology of this time period shouldn't have much more range than a single star system, at least, that was the case in the other universe. He fervently hoped that it would be the same here.

As that scan got underway, he felt a whisper at the back of his mind, like someone calling out to him. He closed his eyes and concentrated, on the feeling, reaching back out.

_"Doctor?" _he heard.

_"Rose, is that you?" _he called back, his heart in his throat. It had to be Rose, it just had to be.

_"Yeah, it's me. Thank God, I was worried you wouldn't be able to hear me."_

_ "I'll always hear you, my Rose," _he replied gently, sending a pulse of love along the bond to her mind. _"Are you alright? Where are you?"_

_ "Yeah, 'm fine. A bit of headache, and I'm a bit stiff, but nothing big. Tell Hoshi I found Simon, and he's okay. She was right, though. This is a Tirraquan slaving ring, and I'm on a ship in orbit somewhere. They're not full up, I guess, which is why they're still here. My guess is that the ship's got some sort of cloak, or the authorities on Xenon would have found it."_

He ran a quick scan for cloaked ships in orbit, and sure enough, there was a Tirraquan signal, plain as day, its measly cloaking technology no match for the TARDIS' advanced scanners. _"You're right, Rose, there's a cloaked Tirraquan ship in orbit. Thing looks massive. The TARDIS found it with no trouble, but the sensors on Xenon probably aren't advanced enough to pick it up."_

_ "Well, then it's a good thing I've got you, right love?" _Rose said, and he got a mental impression of her giving him her tongue-in-teeth grin. He sent her a mental caress, and briefly turned his attention away, dancing around the console to take the TARDIS to Rose's location. "Hoshi, I found Rose, and she says Simon's alright. Hold on tight, now, this might be a bit bumpy." He flipped a few more dials without waiting for her to reply, and reached out to Rose again.

_"Rose?"_

_ "Yes, Doctor?"_

_ "I'm coming to get you."_

0-0-0-0-0

Rose smiled and opened her eyes. She'd found him. He was on his way. A knotted muscle she hadn't realized was tense relaxed, and she beamed up at her three cellmates.

"I found him, and he'll be here any minute now," she announced, and giggled inwardly at the blank looks on their faces. Shocking random strangers with the capabilities of the TARDIS was so much fun.

"How?" Aryn asked. "How is it that he'll be here any minute? It'd take at least half an hour to fly straight to this place, and that's assuming he knew right where it was. Plus, they'd probably just shoot him out of the sky. What, is he telekinetic as well as telepathic?"

Rose giggled. "No, we've got this ship. She's got really advanced scanners, that's how he knows where we are, just saw right through the Tirraquans' cloak. Also, she doesn't fly like a normal spaceship, just sort of disappears and reappears wherever we want it to. That's how he'll get onboard."

As she finished speaking, she felt her bond to the Doctor flare, and quickly realized that he was now much closer to her than he had been a minute ago. She reached out to him, and noticed it was much easier now. He met her mind halfway, clearly having been reaching for her at the same time, and she let him use that link to draw him through the ship to her location. It was a tense few minutes as the Doctor hurried quietly through the corridors of the slaving vessel, avoiding the Tirraquans and homing in on Rose's location. She felt him getting closer and closer, and then suddenly heard the blessed sound of the sonic screwdriver just outside the door. A second later, it swung open, and the Doctor strode in with a smug grin on his face.

"Did you miss me?" he asked cheekily, and held out his arms. Gratefully, Rose rushed into them, and he held her close, both of them clinging far more tightly than was really necessary. Being separated, no matter how briefly, was _not _something they handled well. Rose buried her face in his chest and closed her eyes for a moment as he opened their bond as far as it would go. Whirling thoughts passed between them, with neither of them sure exactly who they belonged to.

_"Rassilon, I thought I'd lost you."_

_ "I was so worried."_

_ "Don't do that to me again."_

_ "Don't ever leave me, I need you."_

_ "I love you."_

Perhaps those thoughts belonged to both of them, because a second later, he was kissing her desperately and possessively, and she was returning that kiss with equal fervor.

A long moment later, someone behind them cleared their throat, startling them out of their intense lip-lock and back into their own minds. Rose blushed slightly and took a step back, out of the Doctor's embrace, but she immediately laced their fingers together. She turned slightly, and found her three cellmates watching her with various expressions. Aryn looked vaguely amused, Simon a bit embarrassed and confused, and Scott irritated.

"Doctor, this is Simon, Aryn, and Scott," she said, pointing at each of them in turn. "Guys, this's the Doctor. See? I told you he'd be here." She grinned at them, and turned back to face the Doctor. "So, where's Hoshi? Did you leave her in the TARDIS?"

"No, she's right…"

"I'm here," Hoshi's voice drifted in through the open door of the cell, followed closely by Hoshi herself. She and Simon caught sight of each other a second later, and she flung herself into his arms and he held her close.

"Hoshi, what are you doing here? You should be on Xenon, where it's safe!" he scolded her without any real anger.

"We came to rescue you, Simon. I wasn't about to sit around and wait for someone else to bring you back to me. Besides, I don't think Xenon's that much safer right now anyway."

Simon chuckled weakly. "You may be right about that. I'm just so glad to see you, Hoshi, and I-"

"Look, this is all lovely and everything, but can we go?" Scott interrupted. "Preferably before they fill the cells and take off for Tirraqua?"

Rose glared at him, but the Doctor snapped into action. "Right, sorry. First things first, we have to open up all the cell doors and release all the prisoners. Then we have to disable the trans-mat so they can't capture anyone else or teleport themselves off the ship to escape justice, then take over the ship and call the authorities. Any questions?"

Rose spluttered a laugh at her ridiculous Timelord's babbling, and he looked back at her, offended.

"What's so funny?" he asked, his face comical.

"You," Rose giggled. "You and your gob." She laughed a few minutes more, while he gazed at her, his expression halfway between offended and resigned. Finally, she got herself back under control, and pulled him out of the cell to go and release the other prisoners.

Opening all of the cells took quite some time, and it quickly became apparent that the slave ship was much closer to full than they had thought, which put them up against a clock. Rose and the Doctor quickly found a terminal, and the Doctor tried to shut down the trans-mat remotely, but the system was locked. It could only be disabled from the bridge.

"Well, that complicates things a bit," the Doctor mused, running a hand through his hair. He ran a quick scan with the sonic, and his frown deepened.

"What is it?" Rose asked worriedly.

He sighed. "Getting to the bridge is not going to be easy. There are at least thirty Tirraquans between us and the bridge right now, not to mention the bridge crew itself, and the first one that sees us is going to sound the alarm, and there'll be a million more of them."

"What about the cloaking device, do you have to be on the bridge to shut that down?" Rose asked, a plan beginning to form in her head.

He cocked his head at her, puzzled. "No, but I would have to be in the engine room."

"How close is that? Can we get there?"

He ran a scan. "Just one Tirraquan in the way, plus four in the engine room itself. There's no way I could get it shut down without anyone noticing, though."

"What if they were all unconscious, though?" Simon spoke up from the sidelines, and instantly drawing Rose and the Doctor's attention. The Doctor opened his mouth to ask how he planned to do that, but Simon cut him off.

"See, the ventilation systems are easily accessible from here, even I could do it. What if we set the environmental systems in the engine room to pump a neuro-toxin into the air? Not enough to kill them, just enough to knock them out. Then you could sneak in there and do whatever you need to do before it wore off."

"Why don't we just flood the whole ship, then? Knock them all out?" Scott pointed out.

"Well, there wouldn't be a way to keep us safe if we flooded the entire ship, would there?" Aryn asked, exasperated.

"Well, actually, we could just bundle everyone into the TARDIS, set the environmental controls on a delay, and knock out the whole ship with us safe in the TARDIS. Then we could shut down the cloak and contact the authorities on Xenon. Hand over an entire ship full of Tirraquan slavers," the Doctor said, grinning. No fuss, no one injured, and the bad guys go to jail. It wouldn't even be that difficult. Now this was the kind of solution he liked to implement.

"That's brilliant," Rose said, beaming. He grinned back at her, and while she turned to compliment Simon, he quickly ran through his knowledge of Tirraquan physiology to come up with something gaseous that would knock them out without killing them, and do it in short order. He found something that would work, and turned to Rose.

"Rose, you get everyone into the TARDIS, and quickly. I'll be right behind you." He spun to face the terminal and began flipping through the programming, pulling up the environmental controls and starting to alter them.

"Not a chance," Rose scoffed. "I'm not leaving without you. Hoshi can show them where the TARDIS is."

"But she doesn't have a key, they wouldn't be able to get in. Rose, you have to go with them. Besides, I want you safe."

Rose stiffened. "That's not going to happen, Doctor. How many times are we going to have to go through this before you stop trying to send me to safety? You know that never works out. I'm staying with you, and that's final." She seized his lapels and forced him to face her. "For better or for worse," she added in a low hiss. She reinforced her words with a gentle prod to his mind, and he looked down slightly, suitably chastised. She was right, of course. Dangerous things tended to happen when he sent her away trying to protect her. He smiled fondly at her, and placed a light, chaste kiss to her lips.

"You're right, of course," he said, so quietly that no one else could hear it. "We stay together." He pulled a spare TARDIS key out of one pocket and tossed it to Hoshi, who caught it with a bemused look on her face.

"Hoshi, take everyone to the TARDIS, and be quick about it. Don't let anyone touch anything, and I mean than, not anything, and Rose and I will be along in a few moments. Run along then," he said, and Hoshi nodded. Together, she and Simon began ushering the crowd of prisoners down the corridor to the place where the Doctor had parked the TARDIS, and Rose and the Doctor turned their attention to the computer terminal. Rose kept watch down the corridor while the Doctor fiddled with the environmental controls, setting them to release a gas that would knock out all of the Tirraquans on the ship, and then set it on a two-minute timer so that he and Rose would have a chance to get back to the TARDIS.

"You ready to run?" he asked her before he started the timer, glancing up to catch her beautiful eyes.

She grinned. "With you? Always."

He grinned back, happily, and entered the final sequence on the program, then seized her hand and took off down the hall to the TARDIS. They slipped in the door with just ten seconds to spare, and edged around the large crowd of people to approach the console monitor. From there, they watched as the Tirraquans in the ship began to collapse.

When they were sure that the Tirraquans were incapacitated and that the environmental systems had cycled back around to producing breathable air, Rose and the Doctor hurried back out of the TARDIS, after giving their guests strict orders not to touch anything in the TARDIS, and to stay put. Hand in hand, they raced through the corridors to the engine room to take out the cloak so the authorities on Xenon would be able to find the ship when they were tipped off about its presence. Hopefully, they would find it before the effects of the gas wore off and the Tirraquans woke up.

Once in the engine room, it was only the work of a few minutes to shut down the ship's cloaking device, and since his calculations told him they still had plenty of time before the crew would begin to regain consciousness, he methodically took out their weapons and propulsion systems as well, just in case. He was just standing up to share a grin of triumph with Rose when a blaster bolt impacted on the wall about three inches to the left of his head. He whirled around, startled, to find that one of the Tirraquans had managed to avoid being knocked out by wearing a sort of gas mask, and was now leveling a blaster at his head.

At the sound of the blaster, Rose had leaped about twelve feet in the air, her heart pounding as she fought down panic. A quick glance at the Doctor revealed him to be alright, and a swift look around the room revealed the location of the weapon. A Tirraquan slaver was standing in the doorway, wearing a gas mask and pointing his blaster straight at the Doctor's head. She swallowed hard, and cursed herself for not keeping a close watch on their surroundings while the Doctor worked. The Tirraquan man raised his free hand and pulled off the mask, revealing his cruel, smiling face.

Jorak.

_Well, damn_, Rose thought. _I knew this was too easy._

**Thanks for reading, and please review! More reviews feed the muse, and a well fed muse lets me write faster.**


	8. Chapter 8: Shiver and Shake

**Well, now that the semester's started up, updates are going to be a bit slower. I shall try my absolute hardest to get a new chapter up every weekend at least, but that annoying thing called "Real Life" has intruded, and won't let me just play around with my stories. Sigh. What's up with that?**

**Anyway, I hope you enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Eight: Shiver and Shake

Rose glared at Jorak. "Did anyone ever tell you you're ugly?" she snapped, and felt the Doctor's faint amusement at the edge of her mind.

Jorak smirked. "So, little girl, is this your man, the one who's going to make us wish we were never born? He doesn't look like much." Jorak paused, and looked the Doctor over carefully. "Though I have to admit, he'd fetch a high price on the right market."

Rose snarled and the Doctor snorted. "Yeah, good luck with that," the Doctor scoffed. "I'd make a terrible slave. So, tell me, big fellow, why exactly are you doing this? Kidnapping innocent people and selling them halfway across the galaxy to be slaves? To be worked to death in the mines, and that's if they're lucky? Why would you want to do this? Surely there's something better you could be doing with your life." As he spoke, the Doctor began to ease slowly over to Rose, hoping to protect her if everything went south.

Jorak raised an eyebrow. "Why? For the money, of course. I make more money off the sale of one pleasure slave than most Tirraquans see in a month. It's made me rich, and money is power."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I'll never understand it. All these species, throughout all of time and space, and somehow it still always comes back to money," he muttered to himself.

Rose was glaring at Jorak, her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched. "And it doesn't bother you that these are real, living people with lives and families that you've taken them away from?"

"No, and why should it?" Jorak scoffed.

Rose grimaced, and reached out to the Doctor with her mind. _"Doctor, it doesn't sound like we're going to get anywhere reasoning with this bloke. Do you have another idea?"_

_ "I've got to give him chance, Rose."_

"So, then, mister- what was your name then?"

"Jorak."

"Jorak, okay. Right then, mister Jorak, I'm going to give you a choice. You kidnapped my wife and tried to sell her into slavery, and as much as that makes me want to throw you into a supernova, I'm going to give you this one last chance. Stop this now, and do something useful with your life, or I will stop you." Rose glanced over at her husband, and she could practically _see_ the power radiating from him. The words _"It is defended!" _ran through her mind as she took in his commanding demeanor and stern face, and she couldn't help the small, proud smile that crossed her lips.

Unfortunately, Jorak didn't seem to be able to see what she saw. He just chuckled darkly. "What are you going to do, pretty boy? Talk me to death? You're not even armed."

"Nope," the Doctor said cheekily, popping the 'p.' "I don't like guns. Never carried one in my life."

"Then you're a fool," Jorak said, and raised his blaster and fired. The Doctor dove sideways to protect Rose, knocking her down and shielding her with his own body. Both of them felt the blaster bolt impact on the Doctor's arm, and Rose gasped in fear and shock while the Doctor hissed in pain. Reacting instinctively to his pain as it echoed through her their bond, Rose sprang into action, letting her Torchwood defense training take over. The fierceness of her sudden assault took Jorak completely by surprise, giving her just the edge she needed. A well-placed blow to his knee made him yelp and fall to the ground, and with another swift movement, she snatched the gun out of his surprised hands and whacked him over the head with it, knocking him out.

For a few seconds, Rose and the Doctor stared at Jorak's unconscious body, stunned into silence. Rose was shocked. Where the hell had that come from? In all her years of traveling with the Doctor, she'd never responded to a direct threat with such decisive- _violence._ She'd never been able to sit back and do nothing while he was in danger, but this was on a whole different level.

The slight sound of him moving behind her snapped her back into focus, and she spun around, hurrying to his side.

"Are you alright? How bad is it?" she asked, one hand going to his face while the other gently took hold of his injured arm.

"I'm always alright, Rose," he said, not wanting to worry her. Instantly, he regretted his flip response as he took in her vicious glare, the way her fingers tightened on his arm, and the wave of reproach that washed over him. He winced, and hastened to rectify his mistake. "Sorry. It's not bad, really. Just a graze."

Her eyes softened slightly. "It hurts, though, I can feel it," she said gently.

"Well, since there's no hiding it from you, yes, yes it does. It hurts. But, it won't take but a minute to put it right with the dermal regenerator in the TARDIS infirmary. The suit jacket, however, is done for," he added ruefully, staring at the burned hole in his sleeve and making a face. "It's a shame, really. I was just starting to like the black. Guess it really is unlucky for me after all," he mused.

Rose giggled, just as he'd hoped she would. "I don't think it has anything to do with what color suit you wear, Doctor," she said, catching her tongue between her teeth.

"Oh? Then how do you explain the myriad of disasters we always find ourselves in whenever I wear a black suit, hmm?"

"As opposed to the hundreds of disasters we always find ourselves in when you wear brown pinstripes?" she pointed out.

His brow furrowed slightly. "Point taken," he agreed, and hissed slightly as he unthinkingly tried to use his injured arm to push himself up off the floor. Immediately, Rose sobered, and gave him a hand up, concern radiating from both her features and her mind. He'd assured her that it wasn't bad, and she could see that with her own eyes, but she couldn't help the surge of protectiveness that swept through her, rather like a wolf protecting its mate. _Actually, that's not far off, _she thought wryly. On the rare occasions when he'd been hurt in the past, she'd never handled it particularly well, but now that she could actually feel the pain his injury was giving him… Well, it made her want to cradle him in her arms, tend his injuries, tuck him up in the TARDIS where he couldn't get hurt again, and then come back here and beat Jorak into a bloody pulp.

She shook off the worst of the feelings, still a bit surprised at the aggressiveness of her response, and tried to mask her concern, knowing the Doctor didn't like to be fussed over.

"Well, why don't we get you back to the TARDIS before Sleeping Ugly and his friends come to," she suggested, lacing her fingers through his.

He squeezed her hand. "Yep, the gas should start wearing off any minute now," he agreed.

As if to underscore the point, one of the Tirraquans in the corner suddenly twitched. Both of their heads snapped in his direction, and Rose made a face.

"Aaaand… that's our cue to leave. Allons-y!" the Doctor said in a rush. He pulled Rose out of the engine room, and together they raced through the halls of the ship back to the TARDIS, with the crew of the ship slowly beginning to regain consciousness.

They darted into the ship, and Rose gently pushed people out of the way so that the Doctor could get to the console. Due to the fact that he could only use one arm, the ensuing flight back to the surface of Xenon was even more bumpy than usual, but the passengers seemed far too stunned by the ship in general to complain, for which Rose couldn't help but feel grateful. They landed with a thump that sent just about everyone to the floor, and Rose and the Doctor leapt back to their feet and got to work. While Rose set about shooing everyone out the door, the Doctor contacted the Xenian police. It took quite a bit of convincing to get them to believe what he was saying, but they finally agreed to check it out, and a few minutes later, he got an apologetic thank you from the Xenon police department. He flashed them his most charming smile, and then cut off the connection and turned to Rose.

"Is that everyone out?" he asked.

"Yep," Rose assured him.

"Good, I hate using the TARDIS as a bus." He made a face, and Rose giggled.

"Did the Xenian police find the slave ship? Did they arrest Jorak and his crew?"

"Yep," he said, popping the 'p.' "In a few hours, they'll all be sitting in jail cells, waiting to be tried. The information on the ship's computers should be enough to convict them, and the Xenian sentence for kidnapping and enslaving sentient life forms is life in prison. So, they won't be causing any more trouble."

Rose smiled in satisfaction. "Good."

"So, where do you want to go, Rose Tyler? Back to our hotel suite?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows absurdly. She giggled again, watching him bounce around the console room. "Or, we could just head on out there, loads more to see- Ouch!" He'd brushed his injured arm up against the console, and he winced, looking down at his burned sleeve and arm.

Rose's smile faded instantly. "Well, the first place we're going is the infirmary, and fix up that arm of yours," she said insistently. She reached out and took his hand and started tugging him into the corridors of the ship.

A single glance at his wife's face told him it would be useless to argue with her, and another painful twinge from his arm reminded him that he didn't really want to argue with her. He followed her into the infirmary, and obediently sat down on the exam bed at her mental nudge.

"Alright, I'll get the dermal regenerator thingy and you just take your jacket and your shirt off," she instructed him, and he seized the opportunity to try and lighten the dark mood he could sense in her mind.

"Why, Rose, are you trying to get my clothes off?" he asked, giving her his cheekiest grin. Rose rolled her eyes.

"Down, boy. Later, _after_ I fix your arm, _if_ you're good," she said, and though she smiled, he could see that it didn't reach her eyes, and her worried mood didn't lighten. He frowned slightly, and eased off his suit jacket and shirt as requested, wincing as the fabric rubbed against the burn. While Rose gently ran the dermal regenerator over his injury with an ease born of having to fix up dozens of mild scrapes in the past, he tried in vain to figure out just what it was that was clouding her mood. Finally, just before she finished, he gave up and just asked her.

"Rose, what is it that's bothering you?" he asked gently, catching her eyes and her free hand in his.

Rose held his gaze for a moment, but then her eyes dropped away, and she finished with his arm in silence. Truth be told, there were several things on her mind, and she wasn't at all sure how to articulate them. She put down the medical instrument with a sigh, and reluctantly met the Doctor's eyes again. She struggled with her words for a minute, and then, all of a sudden, she burst out "You've got to be more careful!"

The Doctor was completely baffled by her sudden outburst. "What?"

"You can't just go flinging yourself into danger and in front of blasters and such anymore! You're part human now, and you don't heal as fast, and you can't regenerate if something goes wrong. You've only got one life now, and I want it to be a really long one, with me, so you've got to take care of yourself! I can't lose you!"

The Doctor started to retort with some stupid, tactless remark about how she was overreacting, but stopped himself as her emotions rushed over his mind. Her intense love for him, her worry, and her desperate, deep-seated fear of losing him all matched up very well with his feelings regarding her, and his eyes softened. He stood up, and gently folded Rose into his arms, stroking her hair. How could he tell her she was overreacting when he would have responded exactly the same way? Had responded like this, in fact, whenever she'd been hurt before.

"It's alright, Rose, I'm fine," he said soothingly. "It was just a scratch, and it's gone now."

"Yeah, this time. But what about next time, Doctor? What if you get hurt and it's too much for me to just fix with the dermal regenerator? It's not like I could just take you to the nearest hospital, no one in the universe has any idea what to do with you, there's never been anyone like you."

He sighed slightly. She did have a legitimate concern. "If that happened, the TARDIS would help you, and as long as I was conscious, so would I. But I promise I'll try and be careful, I want that long and happy life with you just as much as you do," he said, and kissed her forehead gently.

Rose tightened her grip on him and rested her ear on his chest, listening to his single heart beating reassuringly strong. "It's just… I want you safe. My Doctor," she said quietly.

His heart clenched as the memory of the last time she'd said that flashed through his mind, and he held her tighter. "Well, I can't promise I'll stay out of trouble, because we both know that would be a lie, but if you promise me that you'll try your best not to get hurt, then I will promise you the same. Is that a deal?" he asked.

Rose glanced up at his face. While his tone was light, his eyes were serious, and she could feel in his mind that he was just as concerned for her safety as she was for his.

"That's a deal," she confirmed quietly, and he smiled slightly before dipping his head to capture her lips. His kiss was slow and gentle and impossibly tender, and nearly brought tears to her eyes. Why was it that, while she reveled in the passion they had together, it was his tender streak that really undid her?

They broke apart a moment later, and the Doctor rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed and a peaceful look on his face. However, something in Rose's mind was still niggling at him. Something else was bothering her, something different, in addition to her hatred of seeing him hurt.

"So, that was one thing that was bothering you. What's the other?" he asked, opening his eyes to stare into hers.

She smiled slightly. "I can't hide anything from you, can I?"

"Nope, not now, not any more than I can hide things from you."

Rose looked away as she struggled to find the words. "It's- it's about what happened earlier."

He frowned slightly. "Which part?"

"The part where I just all of a sudden lashed out at Jorak and knocked him out before I even had time to process what was going on. I mean, since when is that instinctive behavior for me? And then, even after he was unconscious, a part of me still wanted to just…" she trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence, and more than a little afraid of his reaction. He hated violence, and tended to not think very highly of those who engaged in it. To her surprise, when she finally gathered the courage to look at him again, all she saw in his eyes was understanding and love.

And just a trace of sheepishness.

"Well…" he began, a bit embarrassed. "I think that may have been my fault."

"How?" she asked, her voice dripping with skepticism.

"Well, not so much me as our marriage bond. You see, the way it ties two people together, you almost literally can't live without the other person. Back on Gallifrey, if one half of a bonded pair was killed (and I mean really killed, not just forced to regenerate) it often killed the other, or at the very least drove them completely mad. So, bonding like this instills an intense level of protectiveness, as the survival instinct spreads to include the other person. It's part of why the bonding had gotten rare. Timelords were supposed to be all detached and aloof, and these really intense emotions were considered a bit- unseemly." His eyes took on the faraway look that Rose knew meant he was remembering his planet and its people. After a few seconds, he gave himself a little shake and returned to the conversation. "Anyway, when you felt through the bond that I'd been hurt, that new instinct would have kicked in, making you feel the need to protect me."

"Oh." Rose thought a minute. It made sense, and she was relieved to have her actions explained in such a way. A least now she knew that the more aggressive members of Torchwood hadn't rubbed off on her or something. A though flashed through her mind, and she couldn't help laughing a bit.

"So it really is like a wolf trying to protect her mate," she chuckled, and the Doctor laughed with her.

"A bit, yeah," he said, his eyes twinkling with a teasing light. "A big, bad wolf."

She slapped his arm lightly. "Stop it, you," she mock-growled at him, unable to hide the twinkle in her own eyes. She sobered a bit then, still having questions about this new, unexpected aspect of their marriage bond. "Is this going to have the same effect on you? Like, if the situation was reversed, would you have reacted the same way I did?"

He frowned in thought. "Probably," he admitted. "It's not just not wanting the other person to be hurt, it's instinct, deep instinct, like how you automatically hold your breath underwater. It definitely goes both ways. We'll always be looking out for each other," he added softly, his eyes warm.

Rose smiled. "The old team, yeah?" she said, catching her tongue between her teeth.

He grinned hugely in response. "Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake," he agreed, giving her his adorable cheeky wink.

She chuckled and shook her head a bit, then snuggled happily against his chest again, her confusion and apprehension dissipating in the face of his love and optimism. Whatever the future threw at them, they'd face it together.

They stood like that for a long moment, content to just hold each other, and then Rose remembered something.

"You need to put a shirt on, because we're going back to that hotel," she informed him, pulling slightly away. "It seems a shame to waste that three-day reservation we have, 'cause it was a really nice place, and we hardly spent any time there. Besides, we left my bag there, and I am not leaving those things behind. Some of my favorite clothes are in that bag."

The Doctor laughed. "As you wish, Dame Rose," he said. "After all, we helped break up an inter-planetary slaving ring. I think we deserve to get back to our honeymoon, don't you?"

Rose just laughed, and pulled him along to their bedroom to get him a change of clothes. Of course, they _may_ have gotten a bit sidetracked once they got there…

**Thanks for reading, and please review! Honestly, they keep me motivated to write faster.**


	9. Chapter 9: Changing the Rules

**Yeah, I know, I'm a horrible updater. Well, I better late than never, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Fair warning, it has a great deal of sugar.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Nine: Changing the Rules

"What?"

Rose grinned at the dumbstruck expression on her husband's face. His confused face was so adorable, all the more so to her for its rarity. After all these years, they knew each other so well that she rarely got to surprise him. Truth be told, she was a bit surprised that he hadn't picked up on this little revelation through their bond already.

"I said, I'm pregnant, we're having a baby." When he simply stared at her, speechless for once in his life, her excitement became tinged with a hint of concern. "Doctor? Are you all right?"

The Doctor opened and closed his mouth, gaping like a stranded fish for a long moment while Rose fought down the urge to giggle. Finally, he stammered, "That's- that's brilliant! That's bloody brilliant!" He leaped out of his chair and bounded around the table in the TARDIS kitchen, seizing her hand and pulling her to her feet and into his arms. She let out a delighted laugh as he swung her around in a circle, grinning like a fool.

"Put me down!" she giggled, relieved and delighted by his reaction. She'd been a bit worried that he wouldn't be excited by this, that it might bring up old memories and open old wounds, but judging by his absurdly large grin and the wave of pure joy echoing from his mind, she needn't have worried.

Obediently, he set her back on her feet, but refused to let go of her, holding her tightly in his arms. She shifted slightly, tucking her head against his neck and resting her cheek against his shoulder.

After a long moment, in which the Doctor just held Rose close, beaming, she pulled lightly away, just enough so that she could look him in the eye.

"So, you're happy about this?" she sought to confirm.

"It's brilliant! Fantastic! Molto Bene!"

And with that, he freed one hand and tilted her chin up to capture her lips in an enthusiastic kiss. Her right hand tangled in his soft, messy brown hair, holding him close.

Through their bond, she felt her husband reaching to merge their minds, showing her just how delighted he really was, since there were no possible words in any language that could describe how he felt. She smiled against his lips, and sent a pulse of love back along the bond to him. She felt his lips widen into a smile that matched her own, and they broke apart, breathless, to beam into each other's eyes.

She felt his mind reaching, searching, and giggled when she realized he was trying to connect telepathically to their child.

"Don't you think the baby's a little young for that, my love?" she asked, teasing slightly. "I don't think I'm any more than a month along."

He gave a vaguely superior sniff and adjusted his tie. "On the contrary, she says hello."

"She- _What?!" _Rose choked out, stunned.

The Doctor grinned widely and let her splutter for a few moments before taking pity on her. "Gallifreyan infants start developing their telepathic abilities within the first three weeks. It's not really words at this point, more like simple feelings, so when I say 'she says hello,' I mean that I connected with her and she sent feelings of greeting and welcome."

Rose blew out a breath, still trying to absorb this. "It still seems really early to be able to communicate with our unborn baby," she said, shaking her head.

"It's actually necessary," the Doctor began, and Rose smiled inwardly, recognizing his shift to 'lecture mode.' "When a Gallifreyan child is actually carried by the mother, as opposed to being 'loomed,' the developing embryo forms a very strong telepathic connection to the mother. To the father, too, if he's present. This parent-child bond is every bit as strong as a marriage bond, though it's obviously a bit different, and persists through pregnancy, childhood and adolescence at full strength, then begins to weaken as the child reaches maturity. It doesn't go away, but it sort of, recedes to the back of the mind."

Rose pondered that for a moment, and then an unpleasant thought occurred to her. "So, if the baby bonds to the mother, how come I can't feel her?" Was there something wrong with her? Or was she just too human to be able to support that bond?

"You can," he assured her. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the past couple of weeks, you've felt just a bit different, like something's changing. Your maternal instinct has gotten stronger, and you feel like there's something brushing the edge of your consciousness, just out of reach."

She blinked. "That was her?"

"That was her," he confirmed, nodding. "You weren't feeling her emotions because you weren't reaching for her. Well, why would you? You didn't know you were pregnant at first, and then you didn't know you could connect with her."

Rose's heart fluttered, and she suddenly felt warm from her head to her toes. "So, I could connect with her? Talk to her? Our baby?"

The Doctor made a happy noise in his throat at the words 'our baby' and gave her a loving tender smile, his eyes soft. "Yes, you can," he said gently.

"Will you show me how?" Rose asked, feeling a bit uncertain. She'd never used her odd branch of telepathy with anyone other than her husband, and she wasn't entirely sure how.

The Doctor rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, smiling. _"Of course," _he said, reaching into her mind.

With his mind gently guiding her, she reached out slowly to the mind of the tiny life within her, and gasped aloud as an enormous wave of simple love and welcome crashed over her, in a way she'd never felt before. It felt distinctly different from the Doctor's mind and emotions, simpler and more basic, and with a definite feminine feel that explained how the Doctor knew it was a girl. It was obvious to her, now that she could feel it herself. _Oh, she's perfect, _Rose thought, and felt a wave of agreement from her husband, and something else from the baby, something that felt like thanks and an odd mixture of agreement and embarrassment. She felt the Doctor reaching out and smoothing the baby's slightly ruffled feelings with a gentle thought, and the baby reaching back to him, accepting his comfort and love. Rose couldn't help but feel slightly vindicated: her old assumption that the Doctor would be an excellent father had certainly been true. She felt his smug amusement, and the baby's wholehearted agreement, and tears pricked her eyes, overwhelmed by this perfect, wonderful, beautiful moment.

They stayed connected like that for a long moment, reveling in that perfect moment, and then Rose and the Doctor eased back into reality. As Rose looked up and met the Doctor's eyes, she saw that his eyes were suspiciously wet, just as hers were.

"That was our daughter," Rose said softly, awed. "Our _daughter." _She couldn't help but marvel at the concept. Just a few days ago, she hadn't even known she was pregnant. A few hours ago, she'd been trying to figure out the best way of telling her husband. Now, she not only knew what gender the baby was, but she'd actually communicated with her.

"Yeah," the Doctor said, his voice soft and rough with emotion. "Our daughter."

0-0-0-0-0

An hour later, Rose sat in the TARDIS medbay as her Doctor bounded happily around the room, running scans to check up on both her health and the baby's. Judging by the strength of the telepathic connection, they were both quite sure that she was fine, but figured it was better to be safe than sorry. Now that the initial shock had begun to wear off, Rose found that she had a million questions to ask. She decided to start with the simplest ones, and work her way up to avoid overwhelming herself.

"Doctor, can you tell how far along I am?"

He glanced at her, then pulled his glasses out of his pocket to stare at the monitor. "Four and a half weeks," he said happily. "Must have been when we went to Hawaii."

Rose laughed. "Sometime between when the locals thought we were gods and when they decided you were an evil sorcerer that needed to be destroyed. You just couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you?"

He snorted. "You were the one who insisted on going to see Hawaii before it 'got all touristy,'" he retorted. "I get why you didn't want to go during your time, but we could have gone in the 1970's or something."

Rose just chuckled at his adorable little fake pout. She knew he'd had just as much fun as she had; he was just winding her up. Something else occurred to her then, and she giggled again. "You know what I just realized? We went to Hawaii to celebrate our first anniversary. We were married almost exactly one year before we started our family."

He grinned. "Good way to celebrate, don't you think?"

"Yep." Rose grinned happily, and then got back to her earlier questions. "So, how Gallifreyan is she going to be? I mean, obviously she's telepathic, but what else?"

The Doctor frowned slightly as he considered her question. "It's hard to say. I won't really know until the scans finish-"

The monitor chose that moment to beep, drawing his attention. He adjusted his glasses on his nose and began to read. "Well, I was right, both you and she are in perfect health," he said, and then Rose watched as he suddenly froze, every single muscle locked into place. She wasn't even sure he was breathing. He reached out a trembling hand and touched the monitor, and she could feel pure shock resonating through their bond.

"That's- that's impossible," he breathed, still staring at the results on the screen, and Rose began to worry.

"What is it? Doctor?"

When he didn't answer her, she swung her feet down off the exam bed and went to peer over his shoulder, only to discover that the results were in Gallifreyan and she couldn't read them. She cursed mentally. She was just going to have to get her Timelord to talk to her. She placed a hand on his shoulder and called him again, this time using his true name and reinforcing it with a soft mental plea. That got his attention, and he turned to face her, his eyes wide with wonder.

"What is it, Doctor?" she asked again. "Is something wrong?"

He cleared his throat and quickly shook his head. "No, no. She's fine, brilliant even, and so are you. It's just… You know what? Why don't I show you?"

She gave him a puzzled look, but nodded, and he guided her back onto the exam bed and lifted her shirt, pointing a small device at her stomach. For a moment, nothing happened, but when he fiddled with something on the monitor, she began to hear it. It started soft, so that she could barely make it out, and so she wasn't completely sure what she was hearing. As the Doctor continued to fiddle with the equipment, she realized what it was.

It was a heartbeat, their child's heartbeat. A double heartbeat.

No wonder the Doctor looked so amazed. Their baby had two hearts.

"But how's that possible?" Rose blurted out. "You don't even have two hearts, so how come she does?"

"I- I don't know," he stammered, and continued to stare, dumbfounded at the screen. Seconds ticked by as they both just stared, shocked, but then the Doctor abruptly shook himself and began bounding around the room again, muttering about chromosomes and DNA and triple-stranded helixes while he gathered up different equipment. Rose gave up trying to follow what he was saying when he slipped into Gallifreyan, and just sat on the exam bed, waiting for him to explain.

It was nearly an hour later when he finally slumped backward in his chair and pulled off his glasses, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. He still didn't explain, though, and Rose finally got tired of waiting.

"Well? What?" she asked pointedly, poking his shoulder with one finger. He started, as though he'd just remembered she was there, and his head snapped in her direction. She gave him an expectant look, and he blew out a breath, running his hand through his hair.

"As near as I can tell, she's got two hearts because the Gallifreyan genes are so dominant that they're overwhelming the human genes. You were asking how Gallifreyan she was going to be? Well, it seems the answer would be 'very,'" he said. "She's going to have a lot of Gallifreyan traits, and not a lot of human ones. She's going to be more Timelord than I am."

"Wow," Rose said quietly. She pondered that for a long moment. "How much more? Could she even regenerate?"

He tugged on his ear. "I don't know how much more, and there's no way to tell if she can regenerate. Quite frankly, I don't want to know," he added, and Rose agreed with him. They did _not _want their daughter in a situation where she might need to regenerate.

"So, she's just going to be a bit of a mystery," Rose said softly, one hand laying gently on her abdomen, over the place where their baby was growing. The Doctor stood up, and took two steps over to her side, where he placed his hands over hers.

"A bit of a mystery, yeah," he agreed. "But you know what else she is?"

"What?"

He smiled. "Our daughter is a miracle."

0-0-0-0-0

It took them quite a while to stop simply staring at each other and marveling, but when they did, Rose started bombarding him with questions related to the pregnancy. Technical questions about the parent-child bond, more generic questions about the pregnancy itself, anything she could think of. He answered her questions as best he could, but to some, he simply had to answer "I don't know," because the child of a human and a human/Timelord biological metacrisis was not something that had ever happened before, so it was rather outside his area of expertise. To her credit, Rose didn't seem to blame him for not knowing the answers to those questions. She just absorbed the answers he could give her, and promised they'd figure out the rest together.

When she ran out of pregnancy-related questions for the time being, she fell silent for just a few minutes, then spoke up again.

"Can we go to Earth, visit Mum and Dad?"

He grimaced slightly. Fond as he was of the Tylers, visiting them had certain drawbacks, such as the paparazzi hordes. "We were just there a couple of weeks ago. Can it wait?" he asked, without much hope that she'd let it go.

He was right. She glared at him. "No, I think they deserve to know that they're going to be grandparents in eight months, don't you?" she said sternly.

He winced slightly, realizing there was something he'd forgotten to mention. Well, hopefully she wouldn't slap him. "Actually, Rose, it's not going to be eight months," he said, a bit sheepishly.

Rose frowned, suddenly filled with a feeling of trepidation, and she wasn't sure whether it belonged to her or her husband. _Probably a bit of both, _she thought. "How long is it going to be?"

He tugged on his hair. "Well, it's difficult to say for sure, it might be a bit shorter than a typical Gallifreyan pregnancy, since she's part human, although the baby's carrying a large number of Gallifreyan traits, so it's logical to assume that it'll run closer to the length of a-"

"Doctor," Rose interrupted, with an edge to her voice. "How long?"

He sighed. "Probably closer to twelve months than to nine," he admitted ruefully.

Rose stared at him, speechless, for a minute, then groaned. "Oh, I am so going to kill you."

"Sorry," he said with another wince. "Now you know why my people chose the looming approach."

She reached up and smacked him. "And it never occurred to you to give me a heads-up?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Would you have done anything differently?" he asked, giving her a knowing look.

She squirmed a little. "Well, no," she admitted. "But it would have been nice to know. So, can we go see my mum now?"

He sighed dramatically. "The things I do for you, Rose Tyler. Come on then. Allons-y!" He bounced to his feet and gave her a hand up, and they skipped happily to the console room.

0-0-0-0-0

The Doctor landed the TARDIS in their usual spot on the ground of the Tyler Estate, the same quiet corner where they had grown her. Rather than bounding immediately out of the door as they often did on alien planets and in different times, the Doctor checked the scanner to see if the coast was clear first. While most of the staff was trustworthy, the last thing they needed was to pop out of a blue box on the grounds of the Tyler Estate with someone watching. When the Doctor was satisfied that there was no one around to see them, he took Rose's hand and together they left the TARDIS and walked up to the mansion.

The Doctor had very deliberately landed them in the evening, aiming for a time when both Pete and Jackie were likely to be home, and before Tony's bedtime. Sure enough, as they neared the door, the five year old burst out of it and ran across the lawn to meet them, where Rose scooped him up in her arms with a faint grunt of effort. The sturdy little boy was starting to get a bit big to be carried around like that. However, Rose only got to hold her brother for a few seconds before the Doctor pulled him out of her arms, giving her a look and a mental scold about not lifting heavy things while pregnant. Rose rolled her eyes. Suspicions confirmed, then. The Doctor was _definitely _going to be that excessively overprotective expectant father. Not that she'd really expected anything else from him. With a grin and a slight sigh of resignation, Rose turned her attention to little Tony's babbling.

"Did ya fight any monsters? Did ya blow stuff up? When do I get to go to outer space and fight aliens?"

Rose chuckled at that last. "Maybe when you're grown up, Tony. Right now, Mum would kill us if we took you along."

"Can I ask her? If she says yes, will you take me to fight aliens?"

The Doctor snorted, knowing exactly how that conversation would go. Jackie had never quite forgiven him for whisking off a nineteen year old Rose, and would certainly never permit him to take her baby boy anywhere in the TARDIS. She'd probably slap him into the middle of next week if he so much as mentioned it in passing. Plus, Tony really was too young for the crazy life he and Rose led.

A frown creased his forehead as a thought slipped into his mind. If little Tony was too young for the life he and Rose led, then it sort of went without saying that their unborn child was also too young to be in that much danger. Their days of racing headlong into trouble might have to be over, at least for now. Not that they'd give up traveling in the TARDIS, but… Well, he'd have to talk to Rose, but clearly some sort of alternative would have to be worked out.

He shook his head slightly, chasing those thoughts away. They could deal with all of that when the time came. Right now, he was just going to bask in the joy of impending fatherhood, and accept the congratulations of his in-laws. Now _that… _that was truly the height of domestic. Strangely, though, he found he was quite looking forward to it.

He put Tony down when he began to squirm, and watched as the little boy raced back to the house ahead of them. He chuckled, and shared a look with Rose.

"I swear, that boy has exactly two settings: asleep, and running," Rose said, shaking her head in wonder. "Even you slow down sometimes, but he never seems to."

"Soon we'll be chasing our own around the TARDIS," he reminded her with a smile, and she grinned up at him, well content with her world.

They followed Tony up to the back door at a much more sedate pace, swinging their clasped hands together and grinning. Both found themselves lost in little daydreams about their little family. Rose saw a perfect little girl with her Daddy's eyes, perhaps playing with a little brother or sister, with the Doctor joining in on their games at the slightest invitation. Another mental image, one of her wonderful husband holding a tiny bundle in a pink blanket and smiling happily down at her, flashed across her mind, and wave of anticipation swept over her.

The Doctor, on the other hand, saw a miniature replica of his wife, all blonde hair and shining eyes, and saw himself teaching his brilliant daughter Gallifreyan, to fly the TARDIS, and all the mysteries of the universe. He caught the edge of Rose's dream, the bit about their daughter playing with a younger sibling, and smiled at the thought of having more than one child with his precious Rose. A real, proper family, something he'd thought he'd never have again.

They were both shaken out of their daydreams by Jackie, who met them at the door with a big smile and even bigger hugs.

"Rose! Oh, sweetheart, it's so good to see you. Oh, I love you! And you too, James, I've missed you both. Now come on, inside, and we'll have a nice cup of tea and you can tell us all about all the places you've been and the planets you've been saving. You better not've brought any toys from the Mars or whatever for Tony, though. His friend Billy saw that gadget you brought last time, and I've spent the last week trying to figure out how to get his Mum to stop asking me where we got it."

The Doctor sighed. "Jackie, that wasn't from Mars. It's actually from-"

"Oh, hush up, James, you know what I meant."

He rolled his eyes and followed Rose and Jackie into the house, smirking as Jackie continued to babble. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why, but ever since he and Rose had told Jackie the human name he would be using in public on this world, she had insisted on calling him James. All the time, too, not just in public. He'd asked her why, but she'd been so uninformative at such length that he'd dropped the matter. Rose figured that her mother just felt better attaching a human name to her son-in-law. He eventually got used to it, though, and decided it didn't really matter. People called him James all the time when they were on Earth, so what was one more?

They wandered slowly through the house, with Jackie stopping briefly to ask one of the maids to make a pot of tea, and met Pete in the lounge. Like his wife, Pete also greeted them with hugs and a smile, but mercifully did not start babbling at a mile a minute. The four adults chattered about nothing in particular for a few moments, just getting caught up, but when they were all settled in comfortably with a cup of tea in hand, Jackie turned to Rose.

"So, what's going on? Don't get me wrong, It's wonderful to see you, but you were just here a couple of weeks ago, and your visits are never so close together. Is Earth being invaded again?"

Rose smiled and shook her head. "No, Mum, we're here because we've got some news we wanted to share with you."

"Well, go on, then," Jackie prompted. "Are you pregnant?"

The Doctor's eyes widened in shock, and Rose burst out laughing at her mother's accurate guess. "Yes, actually. We're having a baby. You're going to be a Gran," Rose confirmed, still laughing hard, both at her mother's perception and her Doctor's shock. He really did make adorable faces when surprised.

Jackie let out a high pitched squeal of delight, and barely managed to put down her cup of tea before launching herself across the room to hug her daughter. Pete grinned hugely at them, and stood up to shake the Doctor's hand, offering congratulations of his own. When Jackie managed to calm down enough to speak coherently, she bombarded Rose with questions.

"How far along are you? Do you know if it's a boy or a girl yet? When's the baby due? Are you going to settle down on Earth and raise the baby? Do you have a good doctor?"

"Mum, let me get a word in!" Rose said, laughing. "I'm about four and a half weeks along, it's a girl, she's due in mid-June, and we haven't talked about where we're going to raise her yet." Rose paused for breath, and reached out to take the Doctor's hand in hers. "And I have the best Doctor in the universe," she added fondly, and the Doctor squeezed her hand and caressed her mind in thanks.

Jackie, however, snorted. "Oh, don't be stupid, himself can't be your OB, sweetheart, that's absurd."

"Actually, Jackie, it's necessary," the Doctor cut in, and held up his hands when Jackie took in a big breath to yell at him. "Now, just hold on and let me explain. Our daughter is part Gallifreyan, like me. We can't take Rose to any practice on planet Earth, partly because no one would have any idea what to do with the baby's physiology, and partly because doing so would rewrite human history. We can't go anywhere else in the universe either, because this universe has never had Timelords, which means that, again, no one would know what to do with her. And I'm not taking her to Torchwood, because they still don't know that I'm an alien, and it's best for all of us if it stays that way. Don't worry, though, I assure you that I'll take care of both your daughter and mine." The Doctor couldn't help the surge of pride that swept through him at the thought of his daughter, and he squeezed Rose's hand again.

Jackie opened her mouth to protest again, but this time it was Pete who cut her off. "He's right, Jacks. Rose and the baby need to be looked after by someone who understands alien physiology." He and Jackie shared a look, communicating with their eyes, and finally Jackie conceded the point with a sigh.

Pete smiled slightly, then turned his attention to Rose and the Doctor. "There's something Rose said that doesn't make sense, though. She said the baby's due in June, but it's July, and she said she's already a month along. Shouldn't the baby be due in March?"

Rose glared mildly at the Doctor, who rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Well, actually, Gallifreyan pregnancies are a bit longer than human ones. Given that she's part human, I can't be completely sure that she'll follow the Gallifreyan model, but I am reasonably certain. Which means, of course, that you can't tell anyone that Rose is pregnant yet. We'll let you know when it's alright to tell people. In the meantime, just keep the news of your impending grandchild under your hats."

Jackie pouted a bit at that, but for once, she didn't argue with him. She would have to be a complete idiot to argue with that, and while Jackie Tyler was many things, not all of them complementary, she was not an idiot. She shifted gears quickly.

"So, do you know what you're going to name her yet?"

Rose and the Doctor looked at each other, and burst out laughing. "We haven't gotten anywhere near that far, Mum," Rose said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

"Rose only told me she was pregnant a couple hours ago," the Doctor added. "I checked them both out in the infirmary, and then we came to tell you, and we have eleven months to figure out what we're going to name her. I do have some ideas, though," he said, a bit tentatively, glancing at his wife.

Rose grinned. "I'm sure you do, and so do I. We'll talk about it." The two of them shared one of those melting looks that would bring a smile to the face of the most cold hearted person on the planet. Pete and Jackie both smiled fondly, and the conversation picked back up again.

Rose and the Doctor spent the rest of the evening with her parents, but bid them goodnight not long after Tony was put to bed. After promising to visit regularly through the pregnancy whether or not they decided to settle and raise their daughter on Earth, they headed back to the TARDIS for the night.

The Doctor had put the TARDIS in the Vortex, and they were curled up in their bed, cuddled together with Rose resting her head on his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around her, as they often did. They were just quietly enjoying each other's company when Rose suddenly spoke up.

"You said you had some ideas for baby names. Can I hear them?"

He was a little bit surprised by the suddenness of her question, but he decided to just go with it. "Well, first thing is that she'll need a human name, but I want her to have a Gallifreyan name as well." He watched Rose out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her reaction.

Rose didn't even have to think about it. "Of course," she replied. "That's a part of who she is." When he tightened his arms around her and she felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude from his mind, she frowned slightly. "What, did you think I'd say no?" she asked, lifting her head up to look him in the eye.

"Not really," he admitted. "But it still means a great deal to me, so thank you." He craned his neck up to kiss her, and she sighed happily, reveling in his lips on hers. They broke apart after a while, and she snuggled against his chest again.

"So, do you have ideas for human names?" she asked.

"A few. We could name her after you," he suggested, not very seriously, and he wasn't really surprised when she snorted.

"No way," she said flatly. "Try again, Lord of Time."

He grinned. "Well, do you want to name her after someone close to us, or just choose a name we like?"

Rose hesitated. She actually had something specific in mind, but she wasn't sure whether the Doctor would agree. She finally decided to just go ahead and ask him, figuring that the worst he could say was no. And, knowing him, even if he did say no, he wouldn't be a jerk about it.

"Well, do you remember me telling you about my friend, Emma Davis?"

"The Torchwood doctor?"

"Yeah." She blew out a long breath. "She saved my life, you know, and more than once. She was one of the only people in this universe who didn't try to tell me that I should give up on you and 'get on with my life,' and she never let me give up hope. Her and Mickey and Jake, they kept me sane, and Emma was the one who convinced me to start working on the Dimension Cannon. 'I don't believe in impossible,' that's what she used to tell me." Rose paused, and he kissed her forehead, sensing her melancholy. Even after all this time, the death of her friend still hurt, and they both knew it always would. She took a deep breath and continued. "If it wasn't for Emma, I don't know that I would have ever gotten back to you."

"I think you'd have found a way," he said softly, running his fingers through her hair. "But since Emma was that important to you, and that instrumental in getting you back to me, then by all means we can name our daughter after her. After all, Emma Tyler does have a nice ring to it."

"So… you like it?" she asked. "You're okay with naming our daughter after someone you've never met?"

He smiled slightly, and pressed a kiss into her hair. "Yes, Rose. Particularly after someone who, from what you've told me, sounds like she was particularly brilliant. What about a middle name?"

Her brow furrowed in thought. "I don't know. We'll have to think about it."

"That's okay, we've got time. Shall we see what our daughter thinks of the name Emma?"

Rose grinned instantly, eager for more contact with their daughter's mind. He felt her assent without her needing to voice it, and together they slipped back into their child's mind. Rose let the Doctor pose the question to the baby, since he understood the parent-child bond better than she did, but she felt it as much as he did when the baby gave her enthusiastic endorsement of the name they'd chosen. They slipped out of their daughter's mind with identical huge grins on their faces.

"Well, I guess that makes it official," the Doctor said, hugging his wife tightly. "Our daughter's name is Emma."

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**


	10. Chapter 10: Isn't She Lovely

**I'm sure you're getting tired of my excuses for late chapters, so I'll just say that I'm sorry and shut up so you can read the latest installment. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Ten: Isn't She Lovely

Rose Tyler was not comfortable. It had nothing to do with the bed she was lying in, or the blankets and sheets covering her, or the nice soft pillow under her head, or the handsome man lying next to her, peacefully asleep. No, Rose Tyler was not comfortable because she was twelve months pregnant, plus six days past her suspected due date. And right now, her daughter was simply refusing to stop moving, kicking nearly constantly. When Emma had first developed that habit of kicking all the time, Rose and the Doctor had been amused, saying she was Daddy's little girl, that she'd be a runner just like them. But now that she'd been doing that off and on (mostly on) for the past six months, Rose was very tired of it, and could now say that she was NOT amused. She was tired of being pregnant, and she wanted to hold her baby girl in her arms.

Trouble was, no matter how much Rose and her husband begged their daughter, both separately and together through the parental bond, the only acknowledgment of their pleas that they ever got was a feeling of sincere contentment. They took that to mean that Emma was perfectly happy right where she was, thank you very much. Both parents were getting a bit impatient, and Rose's temper was deteriorating rapidly. The Doctor was taking the brunt of her frustration, both because he could feel it from her mind, and because it tended to be him that she threw things at. So far she hadn't thrown anything more dangerous than a stuffed animal, and he'd either dodged or caught everything she'd thrown. He was being remarkably patient with her, Rose knew, and in her calmer moments she was incredibly grateful for his continued love and support, no matter how hormonal and obnoxious she got. The rest of the time, however, she was just a bit mad at him for doing this to her.

Rose grumbled slightly to herself and sat up, giving up on getting any sleep tonight. She glanced over at her husband, who was still dead to the world, and couldn't help but glare at him. It seemed monstrously unfair that he could still sleep while she was so ridiculously uncomfortable, and she had to fight the urge to wake him up, just to annoy him. She eased out of the bed and scooped up her dressing gown, wrapping it around her shoulders and wincing when she could barely close it in the front. Rassilon, she felt like a whale. She smirked slightly at the expression and shook her head. She still wasn't really used to the bits of the Doctor's mind that kept leaking through their bond. She did have to admit that it was useful at times, though. The Doctor was teaching her Gallifreyan, and though it was an extremely difficult language, Rose had a feeling that it would be even more difficult if she didn't have the Doctor's mind leaking bits and bobs into hers.

She cast one more look at her husband, half jealous, half exasperated, and left their bedroom to wander through the house. After many heartfelt talks, logical discussions and a few screaming fights that left their bond screaming at them, Rose and the Doctor had finally agreed to raise their daughter on Earth, rather than bouncing through the stars with an infant. They certainly weren't going to be giving up traveling in the TARDIS, but they were now going to be based on Earth, in a house with doors and carpets. No mortgage though, thanks to Pete. Traveling the stars was going to be more of a "vacation" sort of thing, though it would likely happen far more often than most families went on holiday. The less frequent traveling was probably going to be good for the TARDIS, however much it might frustrate her pilot. The Doctor had confessed to Rose that despite being "born" in this universe, the ship still didn't really like the different sort of energy. She could still function, but she needed refueling far more often, and the subsequent trips to Cardiff always took longer than they had before.

So, now they had a handsome little house in a quiet London suburb near good schools, doing the most domestic thing in the entire universe. Rose snorted to herself as she pictured the look on her first Doctor's face if she'd told him they'd be doing this one day. He probably would have had her committed. She sat down on the comfortable couch in the living room and continued to ponder the changes in her life.

In addition to having things like a house and a car, they also had jobs, working for Torchwood again. Not as field agents, however. While Pete had been perfectly willing to welcome them back to Torchwood, he had flatly refused to place them both in the field. She closed her eyes, remembering the confrontation.

_"Absolutely not," Pete snapped. "I know you don't think much of protocols, but some of them are there for a reason. I'm not sending a pregnant woman into the field, and I'm not going to send both of the parents of my grandchild into dangerous missions together. Even if that wasn't against regulations, I still wouldn't let you do it. End of discussion. Now if you, Doctor, still want to pursue field work, then that's fine, they'd be glad to have you, but not Rose while she's pregnant, and not both of you."_

Rose sighed. Her father had been right, of course. They had a family to think of. While they had both grumbled and complained some, they had agreed with Pete Tyler's decision. The Doctor had refused point-blank to go on field assignments without her, so now he was working full-time with R&D, while Rose herself was training new agents. Or rather, she would be doing so again when her maternity leave was up. Right now, she was just wandering around the house during the day, trying not to go mad with boredom and begging her daughter to come greet the world.

Which she did again, now. _"Come on, Emma. Don't you want to meet your parents?"_

In reply, Rose got a distinct feeling of confusion. It was a little difficult to tell from only her emotions, but Rose got the impression that Emma was trying to say that she already knew her parents. Rose groaned, and tried to explain that knowing them through telepathy wasn't the same as knowing them in person. She felt Emma essentially thinking it over, and was then hit by a wave of nervousness, anticipation, resignation and acceptance, just before her water broke.

For a moment, Rose just sat there, stunned, unable to believe that that had actually worked. Then she remembered what was happening and heaved herself up off the couch and hurried into the bedroom. She shuffled around to the Doctor's side of the bed, put her hand on his shoulder and shook him gently.

"Doctor? Doctor, wake up."

He rolled onto his back and blearily opened his eyes. "Wassamatter?" he grumbled, his voice slurred from sleep.

Rose giggled a little. He looked so adorable, with his sleepy expression and ruffled hair.

He blinked a few times, bringing her into focus, and groaned at the sight of her laughing face. "Rose, did you wake me up just to laugh at me?"

She giggled again, and shook her head. "No, silly. It's time."

"Time for what?" he groaned.

She made a face at him. "You know, you really are extraordinarily thick when you first wake up," she admonished him, poking him in the shoulder with one finger. "The baby's coming, love."

That got his attention, and he sat bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. He flung off the blankets and sat up, swinging his legs around as he turned to face her, placing his hands on her stomach.

"Are you sure?" he asked, just a bit breathlessly, catching her eyes with a look of excitement and anticipation.

"Yeah, I'm sure. My water broke," she told him, her eyes shining. The Doctor's face took on a look of wonder, and he leaned forward to place a gentle kiss on her stomach before standing and kissing her lips.

"Oh, Rose," he said softly, his voice thick with emotion. They took a few seconds to just stand there, enjoying the moment, and then the Doctor snapped into action. He leaned over and flipped on a light, then darted to the wardrobe to get dressed. While he did that, babbling in light-speed Gallifreyan, Rose picked up her mobile and dialed her mother.

"Rose, it's two o'clock in the bloody morning," her mother grumbled sleepily.

Rose grinned. "Yeah, Mum, sorry I woke you, but I just thought you might like to know that the baby's coming."

She'd barely finished her sentence when her mother let out an inhumanly high shriek, forcing Rose to hold the phone at arm's length to avoid getting her eardrums broken.

"Ouch, Mum! Take it easy, I think they heard you in the parallel universe!"

"Oh, I just can't believe it's time! Give us just a tick, and we'll be right there. Oh, my baby's having a baby! Oh, I can't believe it…"

Rose grinned again and hung up as her mother's conversation degenerated into pointless rambling. She glanced over at her Doctor, and discovered that in the time it had taken her to call her mother, he had finished getting dressed in his usual pinstriped suit, complete with tie. She giggled, and he gave her an affronted look.

"What?"

"It's just, why'd you even bother with the jacket and tie? You know you're just going to end up taking both of them off again; they'll get in the way."

He gaped at her, then shook his head in disbelief. "Humans," he mused. "You're going into labor, and you're worrying about my wardrobe. Come on then, into the TARDIS. Allons-y!"

He took Rose's hand and pulled her along behind as he led the way downstairs to where the TARDIS was parked in the cellar.

0-0-0-0-0

Nine hours, ten minutes and forty-two seconds later, Rose slumped back against the bed in the TARDIS med-bay, exhausted. She watched, a weary smile on her face, as the Doctor cradled their newborn daughter, gently cleaning her up with a soft cloth and cooing at her the entire time. When doting Daddy was satisfied that she was properly clean, he wrapped her in a soft pink blanket and brought her to Rose. He settled Emma in Rose's arms, then placed a gentle kiss on little Emma's forehead and another to Rose's lips. Rose cradled their daughter, holding her close, and felt all of the pain and frustration of the last year melting away. It was all worth it now.

The Doctor stared down at his beautiful family, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill from his eyes. He couldn't believe how lucky he was, how truly fantastic his life had become. For so long, he'd been so lonely, an outcast among his own people, then the very last of his kind. Now, his beautiful, brilliant, wonderful, magnificent Rose had given him a daughter. He had a family again, one that he felt closer to than any other people in the universe, or any universe.

"Look, Doctor. She has your eyes," Rose said softly, drawing him out of his introspection. He shifted closer, wrapping one arm around Rose's shoulders and supporting Emma's head with the other hand. He watched as little Emma opened her eyes again, and sure enough, the eyes that greeted him were the exact same shade as the ones he saw in the mirror every morning. He swallowed past the lump in his throat.

"They look better on her," he rasped, which drew a tired chuckle from his wife. He traced one long finger down Emma's perfect little face. "She's beautiful, just like her mother," he murmured, and kissed them both again. "I love you, both of you."

Rose responded with one of the few Gallifreyan phrases she'd mastered. "I love you, my Doctor," and was startled when he suddenly crushed his lips to hers. Tired as she was, she eagerly responded to his kiss, tasting the salt of his tears. She had to say it was one of the most beautiful kisses they'd shared.

A moment later, they were rudely interrupted by a pounding on the infirmary door.

"Oi! Can we come in yet? I want to see my granddaughter!"

Rose giggled and the Doctor sighed at her mother's impatient demand, then both chuckled as they heard Pete scolding his wife in a weary tone. The Doctor took a quick moment to pull himself together and erase the evidence of his tears before sharing a grin with his wife and crossing to open the door.

"Jackie, Pete, there's someone that Rose and I would like you to meet," he said, unable to keep his ridiculous grin off his face. Jackie shoved past him and went straight for Rose, babbling at a mile a minute, and Pete paused to clap him on the shoulder before following his wife into the infirmary. The Doctor, still grinning like a loon, followed his in-laws back inside, and pushed Jackie out of his proper place by the head of Rose's bed, much to the woman's disgust. A look from Rose kept Jackie from saying anything on that score however, and she quickly moved on to address a more important issue.

"So, are you going to tell us what her name is? You've been so secretive, but I think it's time you told us."

Rose and the Doctor rolled their eyes in unison. "Mum, I told you, we just wanted to keep her name between us until she was born."

"Well, she's born now, so what's my granddaughter's name?"

The Doctor shook his head in wonder at Jackie's persistence, then leaned over the bed. Glancing at Rose for permission first, he gently lifted Emma from his wife's arms and cradled her against his chest, turning to face Pete and Jackie.

"Well," he began, "This is Emma. Emma Hope Tyler." He glanced down at his daughter, and, impossible as it might have seemed, his smile widened even farther. "Now, Emma, I want you to meet your grandparents."

"Oh, give 'er 'ere," Jackie demanded, her Cockney accent thicker than ever in her excitement. She reached out and took the baby with loving, practiced hands, cradling her against her ample bosom, with Pete looking over her shoulder.

As soon as Emma was out of her father's arms, however, both Rose and the Doctor sensed a deep level of discomfort from their daughter. Before either of them could react, Emma began wailing loudly, declaring to all the world that she was not happy.

"Oh, there now, love, it's all right," Jackie said soothingly, rocking her gently. "It's just your Gran." The baby's instant negative reaction had her very distressed, but she tried to hide it.

The Doctor winced, and cursed himself for not thinking of this. "Jackie, you'd better give her back to Rose. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry; I didn't even think. She's Gallifreyan, and therefore telepathic, and she's trying to reach your mind, like she would with me or Rose through the bond we both have with her. She can't reach you, and that's very disturbing to her, 'cause she's too young to realize that she doesn't have to be telepathically linked to everyone."

Jackie frowned, hurt, and took two steps to the bed, placing Emma back in Rose's arms. "Why Rose? Why didn't you take her back?" she asked, still trying to cover up how badly the last few moments had shaken her. Emma, meanwhile, had calmed somewhat, but was still visibly (and audibly) distressed.

The Doctor sighed. "Because the maternal bond is generally stronger than the paternal one, since the child spends an entire year living inside the mother." He could feel Emma's discomfort burning in his mind, and he couldn't figure out why she still so fussy now that Rose had her. Rose rocked her, cooing reassuringly, but Emma still wouldn't settle down. The Doctor ran his hands distractedly through his hair, unable to think of anything. Emma had bonded to Rose, and very strongly too, so that bond should be strong enough to soothe her.

Unless…

"Here, give her to me," he said, and gathered Emma back into his arms. Almost immediately, she quieted down, yawned, and closed her eyes, now radiating contentment.

Pete chuckled. "Well, looks like she's a Daddy's girl, then," he said, and Jackie smiled, albeit a bit nervously.

The Doctor looked up from his daughter's face to meet his wife's eyes, and winced as he felt the bombardment of Rose's feelings against his mind. He felt her hurt, anxiety, jealousy and an intense feeling of inadequacy, and his heart broke.

"Rose, love, it's not like that, really, it's not," he babbled hastily, hating the devastated look on her face and trying frantically to reassure her.

Rose took a deep, shaky breath and fought back the tears that were threatening her eyes. "S'okay, Doctor," she muttered, in a tone that meant it was light-years from "okay." "I get it. I'm just too human for her to really bond properly with me. My stupid ape brain can't handle it."

"No, Rose. No. You're just as capable of supporting the parental bond as I am."

"Then why?" she asked, her voice catching as a single tear ran down her face.

He reached out and placed Emma back in Rose's arms, letting her hold their daughter and absorb the fact that Emma stayed quiet and continued to radiate contentment, then answered his wife's question.

"You remember the day you told me you were pregnant?" he asked, using his gentlest tone. When she nodded shakily, he continued. "And how, right after you told me, I reached out for her mind?" She nodded again. "Well, when I did that, I initiated my bond with her. I did that before you connected with her, you remember? It looks like, when I did that, I accidentally usurped the more dominant position in the parental bond. I swear, Rose, I had no idea that it mattered what order we connected to her, or I would have made sure that you bonded to her first," he stated, emphatically and guiltily.

Rose held her daughter just a bit tighter than was truly necessary, and tried to absorb his words, feeling his deep guilt washing over her mind. "So, Emma's more strongly bonded to you, but only because you connected with her first?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes," he confirmed. "It's not that she loves me more or something ridiculous like that. She loves us both, and you know that, you've been in her mind just as much as I have. And it has nothing to do with you being human."

She searched his eyes and his emotions, and found nothing but sincerity and a touch of guilt for causing this, and tried to let the revelation sink in. Okay, so her telepathic link with her daughter wasn't as strong as her husband's was. But she still had a strong link with Emma, and that was something that no other human mother could say. She squared her shoulders and leaned down to kiss Emma's forehead. This was nothing, she decided. It was just like her father had said; Emma was a Daddy's girl, that was all.

"Okay," she said, locking eyes with the Doctor and smiling slightly.

He gave her a confused look, a bit bewildered by her sudden acceptance of the situation. "Okay what?"

Rose's smile widened a bit. "It's okay, Doctor. It's fine. I think I might have overreacted a bit. After all, I'm exhausted, and my hormones are going crazy right now."

He returned her smile with a tentative one of his own. "I promise, Rose, if we ever have more, I'll make sure that you get a chance to bond to them first," he assured her. He cocked his head to one side, studying her face and emotions, then leaned forward to kiss her, having deemed it safe. She smiled against his lips, returning his soft kiss, glad to have worked out that little bit of confusion.

They broke apart fairly quickly, as her parents were still in the room, and the Doctor turned to face them. "Sorry about that," he said sheepishly. "Now, it won't take too long for Emma to adjust to having humans around, maybe a week or two, so you'll be able to hold her soon," he informed them. "In the meantime, you're still welcome here, and welcome to spend plenty of time with Emma, just as long as you don't touch her without one of us also touching her, 'cause if Rose or I are touching Emma, then she should be okay with you two touching her." He paused. "Was that a sentence that made sense?" he asked his wife, a faint frown creasing his forehead.

Rose chuckled softly. "Mostly," she said, and smiled with her tongue in her teeth. The Doctor sighed in relief as that smile convinced him that his wife really was recovered from the moment of insecurity. He leaned down and kissed first her forehead, then Emma's, and gave them both his most loving smile, sending love across both bonds.

Rose's parents hung around for a while longer, but soon the sight of Rose's eyelids drooping and baby Emma sleeping soundly in Rose's arms made them decide to leave and let the new parents get some rest. The fact that only Rose or the Doctor could carry little Emma made getting them all settled in a real bed a bit difficult, but they managed to get back up to Rose and the Doctor's room, placing their little daughter in the crib at the foot of their bed. Soon, she'd move into the nursery, but for right now, they wanted her close.

Rose spared one last look at her precious daughter before gingerly settling into bed, moving slowly in an effort to not jar her sore body. A few moments later, after he had seen her parents out, the Doctor joined her, settling in beside her and wrapping his arms lovingly around her. She snuggled into his embrace, well content with her world, and they both began drifting off to sleep.

Only to be jolted awake about an hour later by the baby crying and demanding to be fed. They looked at each other and laughed.

"Here we go," the Doctor said, and heaved himself out of the bed to fetch their daughter.

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**


	11. Chapter 11: Lullabies and Laughter

**To all of you who have read, reviewed, favorited and followed this story- Thank you, and I love you forever!**

**To the guest who left me a review about my portrayal of Gallifreyan physiology, three things. One, it wasn't a mistake. Since this is fan fiction, that means I can take whatever creative license I please. Two, as most of Classic Who is not available on Netflix, that makes it very hard for new Whovians like me to get to know the First Doctor, which I think is a crime and a shame, but there it is. All I have to go on is what I get from New Who. Three, in the Season 4 episode, "The Doctor's Daughter," Jenny was born with two hearts. She didn't need to regenerate to get the second. So, that's why I had Emma born with two hearts. Now, I still appreciate the feedback, positive or negative, and I would have explained in a message if I could have, but I still wanted you to know why I made the choices I did. And I've read lots of other stories on this site that made the same choice I did.**

**Anyway, enough of that. You're all here to read the story, not listen to me blather about the inner workings of my brain. By the way, this chapter is absolutely nothing but sugar-coated fluff. **

Chapter Eleven: Lullabies and Laughter

Rose woke, aware that something was a bit out of place, but not able to put her finger on what it was. The baby wasn't crying, the alarm clock wasn't blaring, her phone wasn't ringing, nothing. In fact, the bedroom was silent, for a change. She opened her eyes and turned her head, and was surprised to find the Doctor's side of the bed empty. Well, that explained why she'd woken up. She never slept well without him beside her, hadn't since she'd gotten him back from the parallel universe.

She slipped out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown, and moved to check on her daughter in the crib at the foot of the bed. When she found the crib empty, she knew immediately what must have happened. Emma must have woken up and fussed, waking the Doctor, but she herself must have slept through it. Rather than waking her, the Doctor must have taken the baby downstairs to the living room to take care of her, letting Rose sleep. She smiled slightly to herself. It was sweet of him, but given that she couldn't sleep without him, it was something of a moot point. She had woken up anyway.

She padded out of the bedroom and down the stairs in her bare feet, and stopped at the doorway into the living room, an instant, loving smile on her face at the sight of the scene before her.

Sitting there, perched in the brand-new rocking chair that Jackie had insisted on giving them, was the Doctor, lovingly cradling their daughter in his arms as he fed her a bottle. Just the picture they made was enough to make her feel all gooey inside, but to top it off, the Doctor was singing softly to their daughter. The Oncoming Storm, lovingly and expertly cradling an infant and singing a lullaby in a shockingly lovely light tenor voice. Rose thought that she might just melt into a puddle right then and there.

He hadn't noticed her yet, being too wrapped up in Emma and his lullaby, which Rose recognized as being in Gallifreyan. She picked up a few stray words, like "love," "time," and "home," and took a second to marvel at how similar the Gallifreyan lullaby seemed to be to the Earth ones she'd grown up with. It never ceased to amaze her how some concepts seemed to be shared and understood throughout the universe, how some things were constant in almost all cultures. Everywhere the Doctor had ever taken her, where there had been infants, someone had been singing a lullaby. Soft, sweet, gentle songs with simple, reassuring lyrics meant to calm and soothe. This one seemed especially beautiful to Rose, partly because of the sweet, beautiful melody, partly because of the rich, melodic sound of the Doctor's language, but mostly just because it was her Doctor singing it to their daughter.

Rose watched, smiling, as Emma apparently finished her bottle and made a cute little baby gurgle, which quickly turned into a yawn. The Doctor smiled that tender smile that only Rose and Emma ever saw as he finished his lullaby and set the bottle aside, adjusting his grip on Emma so he could hold her up to his shoulder and burp her. That accomplished, he settled her back in the crook of his elbow and pulled the burping cloth from his shoulder and set it aside, still murmuring softly to her in Gallifreyan. Rose felt a brief pang over her persistent inability to master the beautiful language. She was making progress, but it was coming very slowly. The only thing that held back her feelings of inadequacy on that score was that the Doctor insisted it was nearly impossible for a human to really master Gallifreyan, and that the progress she'd made was astounding. Still, she wished it was easier, as she desperately wanted for him to be able to hear his native language from another's lips. Having been in his mind so many times, she knew how much that would mean to him, and she also knew how much it meant to him that she was trying.

Still, their daughter would grow up learning and speaking that language, as would any other children that they might have in the future. The beautiful, nearly dead language of time would be spoken again, by a new race of Timelords continuing on. The Doctor was no longer the last of his kind.

Rose shifted slightly against the doorframe, drawing the Doctor's attention. He smiled up at her, and beckoned her into the room.

"Sorry, love. I was hoping if I brought her down here we wouldn't wake you up. You need your rest," he said softly.

She walked up next to him and ran her fingers through his hair, absently playing with his messy locks. He leaned into her caresses with a happy smile and made a noise of contentment deep in his throat. "You know I can't sleep without you, Doctor," she replied, just as quietly.

"Yeah, well, I was hoping to get Emma sorted and get back to you before you noticed I was gone. How long were you standing there?"

She smiled gently. "Long enough to know that you have a very nice singing voice, my husband," she complimented him, and grinned, elated, when he actually _blushed. _

"I, well, um… thank you, Rose, I guess," he stammered, and she got the impression that if he hadn't had both hands occupied by holding their daughter, he would have been tugging on his ear. She giggled a bit, but decided to leave off teasing him for a bit.

"It was a beautiful lullaby, too. What's it mean? I only caught a few words," she admitted ruefully.

He smiled at her, his embarrassment fading. "Basically, it's like any other lullaby," he said. "It's an old song, from before the Timelords got to be quite so stuffy about emotions. Even after that, though, people still felt strongly about their children, even if they never expressed a strong emotion at any other time in their lives. Translates roughly to, oh, 'Go to sleep, my darling, you're home and you're safe, and I will love you till the end of Time,'" He stopped, and frowned slightly. "It's a lot more poetic in the original."

Rose chuckled softly. "I'm sure it is. Most songs are better in their original language, don't you think?"

"Mostly," he said, and she fought down a smirk as she watched him transition into 'lecture mode.' "There's this planet called Halitraxus, where their native language sounds so harsh and unmusical that they actually require all song lyrics and poetry to be translated into other languages."

"What, seriously?" Rose laughed outright at that.

He shushed her. "I am trying to get our daughter to go back to sleep, you know," he pointed out.

She quieted, but her eyes still twinkled with merriment. "Sorry. That was just funny."

He grinned. "I know." He paused for a moment, then rambled on. "A very strange lot, the Halitraxians. Very intelligent, but almost no ability to create or imagine. Their music and art are a bit… hilarious, so they tend to latch on to the musicians and artist of other cultures. Because of that, their artistic circles turn into these bizarre patchworks, with bits taken from all over the galaxy."

"Doctor," she interrupted him quietly. "She's not going to go back to sleep if you keep babbling like that."

The Doctor glanced down at Emma, and found that sure enough, she was staring up at him, her brown eyes bright and focused, looking for all the world like she was listening to every word he said. Which, he thought, was probably true. She was part Timelord, and therefore very intelligent, and the Doctor knew that babies understood a lot more of what went on around them than humans gave them credit for. Being able to speak baby meant that he could follow the thoughts of any infant, and there was a lot more going on in those little heads than anyone realized.

When he'd first told Rose he could speak baby, she'd been quite sure he was having her on. It had taken quite a bit of convincing to make a believer out of her. Then, of course, she had found out that the TARDIS didn't translate baby speak, which she thought was hilarious. There were only two languages that the TARDIS didn't translate: the ancient, mighty language of the Timelords, and baby talk. Rose still hadn't stopped teasing him about that. Personally, he didn't see what was so funny about it. It wasn't like Gallifreyan had anything in common with Baby, it was just a quirk of the TARDIS, but Rose didn't see it that way.

Emma stretched and wiggled, drawing his full attention back to his beloved little daughter. His eyes traced her perfect little features, in which he could already see his wife, in everything except the eyes. His eyes, which he was still convinced looked better on Emma's face.

"She really is perfect, isn't she?" he murmured softly, his voice full of wonder. "Our little miracle."

Rose smiled lovingly, and bent down to kiss Emma's cheek. They both grinned when they felt a wave of happiness and contentment from Emma's mind. "Yeah, she is," Rose said in reply to his earlier observation.

After a moment, Rose gently took Emma from the Doctor's arms so that he could stand without jostling her, and she carried their daughter back upstairs to the bedroom while he dealt with the used burping cloth and the empty bottle. He joined her back upstairs just as she was settling Emma back in her crib. He walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her gently against him as they looked down at their daughter, who gave an adorable little yawn and closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep.

They continued to smile down at her for a long moment, basking in the joy their daughter had given them and the love they felt for her and each other, which seemed to grow with each passing day. Rose leaned her head into her Doctor's shoulder, and he transferred his gaze down to her, smiling into her eyes.

_"We should probably get some rest," _he said, directly into her mind so as to not risk waking Emma.

She agreed, just as silently, and they slipped into their bed after Rose turned off the lamp. He pulled her close and she snuggled into his arms, quite convinced that there was no way she could ever be happier than she was right now. As she drifted back to sleep, he caught the edge of that thought from her mind, and he had to agree. He had his beautiful wife, his beautiful daughter, a home, a family, and their TARDIS, which he could hear humming in the back of his mind. Life didn't get any better than this.

0-0-0-0-0

_Several months later…_

The Doctor gritted his teeth and tried very hard not to imagine what his ninth self would have done if he could see what he was doing right now. That version probably would have fallen over laughing at the sight of him trying (and failing) to get a spoonful of baby food into the mouth of his squirming, stubborn daughter. She did _not _want to eat that. It smelled bad, the texture was nasty, and she was informing him in no uncertain terms that she had no intention of cooperating. She wanted to know why he couldn't give her any decent food, since Mummy didn't seem to have any trouble in that department.

He sighed theatrically and stuck the spoon back in the jar and set it aside, running his free hand distractedly through his hair. It was getting a bit long again, and he needed a haircut. Rose was always teasing him about how vain he was, particularly about his hair, but he knew she loved it.

He shook himself slightly. Thinking about his hair (and his wife's appreciation of it) was not helping him figure out how to get his daughter to eat her breakfast.

"Come on, Emma, it's not that bad," he whined at her, and groaned when she giggled. "Here, see? I'll prove it to you." He stuck his finger in the jar and licked it, trying to prove a point, and nearly spat it out. Emma crowed in triumph in his mind, giggling aloud and waving her little fists, knowing there was no way he'd make her eat that stuff now. "Bleagh! Pears! Okay, you had a point. I'll find something else, and I'll be sure to tell your mother to never buy pear again. I know I didn't buy that. Sorry, love, I'll just chuck this out and see if we've got any banana left."

Emma babbled happily as he got to his feet and chucked the offending jar of pear baby food in the bin and rinsed off the spoon before rummaging in the fridge and coming out with a jar of banana-flavored food. "Ha!" he cried triumphantly, grabbed a clean spoon, and settled down in front of his daughter again. "Now, let's try this again, shall we?"

He scooped up a spoonful and deposited it in Emma's open mouth with no difficulty whatsoever, and shook his head. "You really are my daughter, aren't you?" he teased her lightly. "Won't touch a pear with a ten-foot pole, but you'll eat anything with a banana in it. Daddy's little girl, you are."

"Daddy!"

He stopped, another spoonful of baby food halfway to Emma's mouth, and stared at her. "What?" he stammered stupidly. "Did you just…"

Emma beamed at him, apparently delighted with her achievement. "Daddy!" she stated again, and nudged his mind, showing him a picture of the spoon in his hand and projecting her hunger. A bit dazed, he fed her another bite, and then it dawned on him what had just happened. A huge grin split his face, and he called out for Rose through their link, his excitement bubbling over.

A moment later, Rose stuck her head into the kitchen, halfway through putting her makeup on. "What's got you so excited?" she asked, amused.

The Doctor grinned up at her as he fed his daughter another bite. "She just said her first word! She said 'Daddy'!" he crowed.

A matching grin spread across Rose's face. "Oh, did she? That's brilliant! Can you get her to say it again?"

They spent the next ten minutes trying to coax Emma into saying that again, without any luck. Her mind was radiating smugness and a very Doctor-like sense of mischief, and Rose and the Doctor were quite sure that she was refusing to say it on purpose. Finally, they gave up, and Rose ducked back into the bathroom to finish with her makeup while the Doctor cleaned up the kitchen and the baby, telling Emma that it wasn't very nice of her to refuse to talk like that. He poured a cup of tea for his wife and started munching on a banana, musing on how long human females took to get ready.

Rose appeared back in the kitchen just a minute later, eyeliner now on both eyes, and placed a kiss on Emma's forehead before scooping up her tea with a nod of thanks. She quickly drank it down and inhaled her breakfast, rather like the Doctor was doing, and then scooped Emma up in her arms to get her ready to be dropped off with Jackie at the Tyler mansion. (Given that Emma had two hearts, they hadn't wanted to risk trusting her to some unknown nanny.) As Rose adjusted the cute little pink outfit she'd dressed her daughter in that morning, Emma suddenly giggled and announced "Mummy!" much to the surprise of both her parents.

They stared at their daughter, then at each other. "Did she just…" they said in unison, and burst out laughing.

"Oh, only your daughter would say her first and second words in under an hour," Rose laughed, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, she's just brilliant, she is," he said fondly. "And she gets that from you just as much as me," he added, kissing his wife's temple and his daughter's forehead.

Rose also placed a happy, proud kiss on Emma's cheek, then sighed. "Well, we'd better get going, or we're going to be late for work. Have you got everything?"

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Rose."

"Your phone?"

"Yes."

"Keys?"  
"Yes."

"Wallet?"

"Yes, Rose, big Timelord brain, remember? I can remember to bring my necessities, you don't have to remind me every morning."

"Well, you have to admit, you have forgotten each and every one of those things at least once a month since we started working for Torchwood, so you'll forgive me for checking. Do you have Emma's bag?"

He scowled at her infuriating logic, and scooped the bag up off the chair beside him. "Yep."

"Which is fully packed, including her duck?"

"Yes, Rose. See?" he said, pulling the little yellow stuffed duck out of the bag to show her. The little toy had been a gift from Jake, and it was Emma's absolute favorite.

As soon as she saw her favorite toy, Emma giggled happily and reached out her little hands for it, and stunned both her parents by saying "Duck!" in a loud voice.

Rose and the Doctor stared at her, and the Doctor mutely handed Emma the duck, unsure of what else to do. Emma gurgled happily and promptly stuck one of its feet in her mouth. After a few seconds of stunned disbelief, Rose and the Doctor both shook their heads, laughing incredulously.

"At this rate, she'll be using complete sentences by the end of next week," Rose snorted, and carried her out to the car, the Doctor following behind and laughing uproariously. He locked the door behind them, then bounded in front of Rose and opened the door for her, and she carefully buckled Emma into the car seat.

As she was settling herself into the passenger side of the car, another thought occurred to her.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, love?"

"Is your 'gob-that-never-stops' thing inheritable?"

**Thanks for reading, and please review! Hope all that sugar didn't give you too many cavities!**


	12. Chapter 12: Round Three

**This is me, prostrating myself before you all and begging forgiveness. My life kinda went to hell in a hand-basket last week, and I didn't get to write at all. In penance, I shall be giving you an additional chapter this weekend. Anyway, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Twelve: Round Three

"Are you sure you want to do this, Uncle Tony?"

"Bring it on, Stormcub, I'm not afraid of a nine-year-old."

Rose and the Doctor shared a grin as they watched Emma sigh theatrically and settle down on the floor by the coffee table, where she and Tony had set up a chess board. Tony sat down opposite her with a confident smirk and spun the board so that the white chess pieces were on Emma's side, and gestured for her to make the first move. Emma gave her teenaged uncle a look that said, quite clearly, "You are so going down," and moved one of her pawns forward. Tony grinned and made his first move, and the game began.

Rose snuggled a little closer to the Doctor as they sat on the sofa, watching the chess game unfold and desperately trying not to laugh at poor Tony. The fifteen-year-old was pretty good at chess, as the Doctor had taught him to play a few years ago, but he was no match for Emma's rather formidable skills, enhanced as they were by her Timelord brainpower. She could even hold her own in a game against her father, though she'd only actually beaten him once. She still crowed about that victory, and the look on the Doctor's face as his nine year old informed him that he'd been checkmated had been the funniest expression Rose had ever seen in her entire life. Right now, Emma was trouncing Tony, and the funny part was that Tony didn't even seem to realize how badly he was being beaten.

About halfway through the game, Rose felt a slight tug on her mind, and glanced around to find her five-year-old son staring out the living room window, bouncing up and down with a big grin on his little face.

"What is it, Michael?" she called, not moving from her place on the sofa, leaning up against the Doctor's shoulder. She was pregnant again, and the little one was due any time now, which greatly discouraged any unnecessary movement.

"It's snowing, Mummy!" Michael announced happily, and pulled the curtain aside to show the rest of the room. Sure enough, fat, fluffy white flakes were drifting down outside, making the cold, dreary February afternoon just a little bit more interesting. Emma and Tony both glanced up, but were too involved in their game to get too excited about mere weather. Rose grinned as Michael and the Doctor began babbling back and forth, and the Doctor promised to take his son outside to play in the snow as soon as there was enough of it to actually play in. Apparently satisfied with this plan, Michael bounded over to the sofa and pulled himself up onto it, cuddling up to his parents and happy as a clam.

Rose stroked one hand through her son's messy, spikey brown hair, so very like the Doctor's, and smiled contentedly. Michael Alan Tyler was so much like his father it wasn't even funny, all happy exuberance and boundless energy, interested in everything, brilliant, and very good at getting himself into mischief. His favorite toys were the ones he could build other things out of, like this universe's version of Legos. Unfortunately, he also liked to take things apart, and he didn't always get them put back together properly. Once, when he was only two, Rose had come into his room to find her son busily loosening the bolts on his crib with a set of plastic toy tools that Pete had given him. She'd been forced to take away the toy tool set until he was old enough to understand that he couldn't take everything apart. (It was still hidden in the garage, he hadn't learned that lesson yet. Given who his father was, she wasn't entirely sure he ever would.) He looked rather like someone had taken the Doctor and shrunk him down to the size of a five-year-old, with one exception: his eyes. Michael, (or Mick as he was usually called) had his mother's hazel eyes.

Rose smirked as Emma used one of her bishops to take out Tony's queen, leaving the boy gritting his teeth in frustration, and her thoughts turned to her eldest child.

Where Mick looked like a miniaturized version of his father, Emma had inherited features from both parents. She'd gotten a lot of her facial features from Rose, but she had her dad's eyes and brown hair. She was quite tall for her age too, whereas Rose had always been one of the shortest girls in her class growing up.

Personality-wise, Emma was just as brilliant and energized as her little brother, though a bit quieter and a lot less distractible. The Doctor was already teaching her how to fly and repair the TARDIS, and he had been for nearly three years now. Emma absorbed everything her father taught her like a sponge, whether it was the inner workings of the TARDIS, temporal physics, music, the history of Gallifrey or anything else that he had picked up in over nine hundred years. She was thirsty for all kinds of knowledge, a thirst that her parents were more than happy to satisfy.

About a year ago, they had taken the kids ice-skating on the mineral lakes of Koorharn, and Emma had been instantly hooked. She had pestered her parents constantly until they set her up with proper figure-skating classes, and had then proceeded to stun the instructor with her incredible natural talents. She was astoundingly graceful for such a young child, and had taken to the ice skates like a duck to water. She was now competing in tournaments against other kids her age, and winning nearly every time. Watching the routines, Rose had thought the Doctor's chest would burst with pride in their daughter, because she wasn't just talented. She was a prodigy.

Rose snorted softly as Tony managed to take out one of Emma's knights, only to lose both of his rooks in short succession. Judging by the crease that had appeared between his eyebrows, Tony had begun to realize just how much trouble he was in.

Her brother was a true Tyler, bright, caring, and born with an innate refusal to let anyone walk over him. She knew that he sometimes felt inadequate next to his sister's family, with their Timelord brains and all, and he got terribly embarrassed when Emma or Mick started correcting his homework, but he never took it out on them. Rose and the Doctor knew that Tony had nothing to be ashamed of, he really was brilliant, and had taken the first tentative steps on the way to becoming a doctor of medicine. He was quickly growing into quite a handsome boy, as well, all ginger hair and blue eyes like his father.

Tony spent a great deal of his spare time at Rose and the Doctor's home rather than at the Tyler mansion, a habit he'd picked up when he was just a child, craving his big sister's stories of adventures throughout all of time and space. At some point, he'd learned that Rose had been called the Bad Wolf, and that the Doctor was sometimes referred to as the Oncoming Storm, and he'd thought those titles was so cool that he'd twisted them into a nickname for their children, Stormcub. He used it with all three of the kids, including their unborn daughter, but most often with Emma. While Emma pretended to hate it, the entire family knew that she secretly loved the nickname. However, only members of the family were allowed to call her that, and woe betide an outsider who attempted to do so.

Pete and Jackie had changed very little over the last decade. Pete still juggled Vitex and Torchwood, though he was starting to make some provisions for his retirement in both places. The political situation around Torchwood was getting more and more heated, as both sides of the eternal "What do we do with aliens" debate gained more and more supporters and grew steadily more vocal and adamant about their beliefs. One of the groups on the "shoot first and ask questions later" side had even begun to target high ranking members of Pete's party. So far, they had stuck to political tactics, such as blackmail and bribes, most of which were completely ineffectual, but there was no guarantee that they would continue to do so. There had been many late night sessions between Rose, the Doctor, Pete, and Jake discussing that possibility, and laying contingency plans if the worst should happen.

Jackie was still loud and brash and adamant in her protection of her family, though she had begun to mellow somewhat as the years went by. Over fifteen years of love, happiness and security had done wonders for her temperament, and she was actually getting along with the Doctor these days. Well, mostly. He still didn't understand why she continued to insist on calling him James, and that remained a point of contention between them. Rose also suspected that her mother still had issues with the telepathy that ran rampant in Rose and the Doctor's home, mostly because she hated being left out of such an important side of her grandchildren's lives.

As for Rose and the Doctor themselves, well, ten years into their marriage, they were just as devoted and unshakable as they had been the day they said "I do." It would have been hard not to be, given that they had an unbreakable telepathic bond, but they were still asked if they were newlyweds whenever they went somewhere without the children. Jackie called them "adorable." Tony sometimes called them "sickening."

These days, the Doctor had just a bit of grey at his temples, and the laugh lines around his eyes were etched just a bit deeper. His glasses, once a glorified fashion accessory, there only to make him look clever, were now a permanent fixture on his face, as he needed them to see. He hadn't added so much as an ounce of weight to his slim frame, though, stubbornly remaining as thin as ever without any conscious effort, to Rose's jealousy and frustration. He remained as gorgeous as ever, and not just in Rose's admittedly biased opinion. She'd always loved his glasses, and the grey just served to remind her that she wasn't going to have to leave him alone for centuries after her death. He was accepting the changes far more gracefully than Rose had anticipated, as she had thought he would find the grey hair and diminished eyesight demeaning, but he seemed instead to regard the whole affair as a new adventure. After all, aging was rather new to him. He hadn't done so since his first regeneration.

Rose herself was also aging rather well, though the pregnancies had added some stubborn pounds to her figure. It wasn't really enough to damage her self-esteem, just enough to make her move up a dress size. When she did feel a bit down, the Doctor always insisted that she was even more beautiful than the day they had met, and she could always feel his sincerity ringing through their bond. He never said that just to try and make her feel better. She had yet to discover any grey in her hair, but she had her suspicions that when the grey did make its appearance, she'd be far less stoic about it than the Doctor.

"Checkmate," Emma said smugly, leaning back from the chess board and crossing her arms over her chest. Tony stared at the board in disbelief for a long moment, then burst out laughing, shaking his head.

"You'd think I would have figured out not to underestimate you by now, wouldn't you, Stormcub?" Tony sighed ruefully. "But no, I just keep on handing you opportunities to make an idiot out of me."

"You're not an idiot, Uncle Tony," Emma scolded him, frowning, just as Rose had been about to say the same. "You're brilliant, just not as brilliant as me."

Tony laughed. "Well, that's not saying much, now is it, squirt?" he commented, reaching out to ruffle Emma's shoulder-length hair. She batted him away, scowling, and he chuckled. "It's hard to be as brilliant as you. Good game, Em, thanks for playing and reminding me that I'm just a mere mortal, now I've got a history paper to write."

"Thanks, Uncle Tony," Emma said, looking up at him as he picked himself up off the floor and grabbed his backpack from where he'd tossed it as he came in.

"Is it alright if I use the study, Sis? Doctor?" he asked, looking from Rose to the Doctor. He often preferred doing his homework and hanging out here rather than at his Tyler mansion, partly because the Doctor's library was much more extensive and helpful, and partly because he just enjoyed being around his niece and nephew. For a teenage boy, he was surprisingly good with kids. Rose had overheard a conversation Tony had been having with their father, in which Tony had expressed a slightly hesitant desire to be a pediatrician.

"Of course, Tony, you don't even need to ask," the Doctor replied.

"Great, thanks." He tossed his backpack over his shoulder, and leaned down to mess up Emma's hair again, just to annoy her. "See ya later, Stormcub."

Emma glared at her uncle as she quickly fixed her hair. "Go away, ape," she grumbled.

He chuckled, and headed down the hall to the study.

"Emma? Will you teach me how to play?" Mick spoke up suddenly, his eyes on the chess board.

"Sure. Come here," she replied, and began to reset the board for a chess lesson.

A warm feeling spread through Rose's chest as she watched the interaction between her two young children. She'd seen lots of situations where a pair of siblings did not get along at all, but Emma and Mick were great friends. Of course, that was partly due to the Gallifreyan sibling bond they shared, but it was still heartwarming to see them interact. Emma was always patient with her baby brother (except for that time when he'd cut the laces on her best set of skates, then she'd clobbered him), and Mick really looked up to his sister.

The telepathic sibling bond had come as quite a surprise to Rose. The marriage bond was formed on purpose, and the parental bond seemed like just a telepathic extension of the maternal/paternal instincts that humans had, but the idea that siblings could have such a link had been very surprising to Rose. The Doctor said it was the lightest of the permanent telepathic bonds formed by his people (except in the case of twins, apparently that was an entirely different situation), and was made possible by the fact that both siblings would have a bond with their parents. It formed gradually, through the sort of background noise that they would hear through their parents, and eventually they would begin to hear each other without assistance. Right now, Emma and Mick could communicate telepathically as though it were second nature, and both were beginning to be able to hear the baby girl Rose was currently carrying.

This third pregnancy had come as a bit of a surprise. They had been thinking about trying for another baby, when one morning Rose woke up to find that the decision had been taken out of their hands. After she told the Doctor, they had simply looked at each other, shrugged, and started turning one of the two guest rooms into another nursery. Their home was big and beautiful, and easily supported their family, with six bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a nice big finished basement where the TARDIS was parked between trips. The kids each had their own rooms, and there was still room left over for a guest room and study. To Rose, having grown up real humble on a Council Estate, this was the lap of luxury, and she couldn't imagine anything more perfect. In fact, she sometimes felt like she had to pinch herself, just to prove that all of this was real. Not just the house, but all of it: the Doctor, their children, her parents, her brother, the TARDIS… The Doctor was always more than willing to provide her with evidence that she wasn't dreaming, though, and that always led to an enjoyable evening.

She felt a tickle in her mind that was her youngest child reaching out through the link, and smiled, resting one hand on her pregnant belly. True to his word, the Doctor had made quite sure that Rose bonded to Mick and to their unborn daughter before he did, so she held the dominant position in the parental bonds with both of their younger children. It didn't seem to make much difference in the children's lives, or in how close they were to either parent, but it had been very important to the Doctor that he prove to her that it didn't matter that she was human, she was still just as important to their children. She appreciated both the action and the sentiment behind it; it was things like this that just made her fall more and more in love with her husband with every passing day.

The tug on her mind grew more insistent, and Rose turned her attention inward. After a moment, she caught on to what her daughter was trying to communicate, and grinned. This little one certainly was more polite than her siblings, after all, Emma had needed to be coerced, and Mick had come without any warning at all.

"Doctor?" she said, drawing his attention away from the chess lesson Emma was giving Mick.

"Hmm?" He kissed her temple lightly as he waited for her to speak.

"Our little one just informed me that she's really to come greet the world."

A huge grin lit his face, and he stood up and offered her his hands to help her to her feet. "Well, then I guess we'd best get you down to the TARDIS, my love,"

"Is the baby coming?" Emma perked up, abandoning the chess board.

Rose smiled down at her daughter's excited face. "Yes, love. You're about to have a little sister."

"Aw, I already have a sister. Are you sure I can't have a brother?" Mick complained, and Rose and the Doctor shared a laugh as Emma glared at him.

"Well, I want a sister, so you just shush," she scolded her brother with a frown.

"Emma, run down to the study and get Tony, would you? Have him call your grandparents and tell them the baby's coming. He'll keep an eye on you two until they get here. Now, both of you, stay up here and don't come down to the TARDIS until we tell you it's okay, got it?"

"Just like when Mick was born, right Daddy?" Emma said, looking up at her father.

"Just like when Mick was born," he confirmed, and kissed both his older children's foreheads before leading Rose down to the TARDIS med-bay.

Once there, Rose changed out of her regular clothes and into a comfortable hospital gown, then the Doctor took her hands in his.

"Are you ready for this, love? Round three?"

She grinned up at him, tongue in her teeth. "Ready if you are," she challenged him. A second later, her smile faded as her first contraction hit. She gritted her teeth and clutched at the Doctor's hands, carefully regulating her breathing and riding out the pain with the confidence of experience. After all, she'd done this twice before already, and she knew the ropes. Both of them were far calmer about this pregnancy and birth than they had been with Emma, or even with Mick. Not that the Doctor wasn't still nervously planning for every possible contingency scenario, but hey. That was to be expected, given that he was both father and doctor.

When the first contraction had faded, the Doctor lovingly kissed her forehead and guided her down onto the bed, settling her as comfortably as possible. Rose took a deep breath, and got ready to bring their youngest daughter into the world.

0-0-0-0-0

Almost exactly five hours later, Rose was holding their tiny baby girl in her arms, with the Doctor looking down on her and stroking her face with a gentle hand. Rose couldn't help but marvel at the powerful wave of love that swept over both of them, no less powerful than it had been when Emma and Mick were born.

"Oh, I'll never get used to this," she said tiredly. "It's every bit as amazing now as it was the first time, with Emma," she added in response to his questioning noise.

"Yeah," he agreed softly, tracing his long fingers over the downy-soft bit of blonde hair on their daughter's head. "She's amazing, isn't she?"

Rose smiled. "She's beautiful."

They spent a few more minutes just marveling over their youngest in private, before deciding they'd better let the rest of the family in to see her before they started eating each other out there. The Doctor quietly reached for Emma's mind and invited her to bring the others down to the TARDIS med-bay to meet the newest addition to the Tyler family. Emma's response brought grins to the faces of both parents, as she broadcast her excitement so loudly that Rose could pick it up, even though Emma was technically just talking to her father.

A few moments later, there was a knock on the infirmary door. The Doctor bent and kissed Rose's lips and the baby's forehead before crossing the room and letting in the rest of their family.

As soon as the door was open, Emma and Mick tried to race past him into the med-bay, but he quickly caught one of them in each arm and held them back.

"Whoa! Take it easy, you two. Your Mum's exhausted, and you need to be gentle with your new baby sister. She's not old enough to deal with your usual shenanigans."

He and Rose both felt the wave of apology from their children's minds, and sent back love and forgiveness."

"_It's all right, you can still come in, just take it easy," _he reassured them mentally.

_"Sorry, Dad, I should have remembered. I just got excited," _Emma replied, her mental 'voice' contrite and a bit embarrassed.

He ran a comforting hand over her soft hair. _"You have every right to be excited, Emma. After all, it's not every day you get a new baby sister."_

A brief wave of melancholy swept over him as it occurred to him just how different his children's lives were compared to his. On Gallifrey, Mick and Emma would likely have been strictly reprimanded for their displays of emotion, but the Doctor was determined not to raise them with typical Timelord inhibitions. His children would grow up knowing love and joy, with their natural curiosity and compassion encouraged, not stifled. He was, of course, educating them on the Laws of Time, but that was a matter of maintaining the order of the universe, not old stuffy tradition.

_"Daddy? Can we meet her yet?" _Mick asked, trying to hide the fact that his excitement rivaled Emma's, despite his earlier words about wanting a brother.

_"Course you can. Come here," _he said, holding out a hand to each of his older children.

"Oi! James! Stop head-talking and talk out loud so we can all understand you!" Jackie snapped, making Rose giggle and drawing his attention to the humans in the room.

"Sorry, Jackie," he said aloud, and ushered Mick and Emma to his wife's bedside.

"Bloody Timelords," Jackie muttered. "Standing around thinking at each other. I swear, I'll never get used to it."

Emma giggled at her Gran's grumbling, knowing she didn't mean anything by it, Gran just liked to complain, and take cheap shots at Dad.

Mick, meanwhile, decided that being five years old and therefore short was unacceptable, as it meant that he couldn't get a good look at his little sister. So, he climbed up onto the hospital bed and perched next to Rose, staring at the small, pink-wrapped bundle in his mother's arms.

"I thought she'd be bigger," he admitted. "She's so tiny."  
Emma snorted. "Your spatial perceptions need work, Mick." She started to say more, but her father cut her off with a raised eyebrow and she fell silent, suitably chastised.

"So, what's her name?" Tony asked, gazing at his youngest niece with a small smile on his face.

Rose and the Doctor shared a look and a smile.

"Do you want to do the honors, Rose?" the Doctor asked, putting his arms around Emma's shoulders and pulling his daughter close. Emma's gaze, like her brother's was riveted on the baby, and he could feel how eager she was to start getting to know her sister.

Rose's smile widened, and she shifted in the bed, adjusting her grip on the baby so that everyone could see her. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet the newest member of this family, Sarah Jane Tyler."

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**

**Oh, and the fluff goes away next chapter. **_**Things**_** will start happening. **

**By the way, if anyone has a brilliant idea for a name to give a male, human villain, please share. I'm having trouble naming this character, and if I don't get some help, he's gonna end up named Bob or something equally silly.**


	13. Chapter 13: Breach of Protocol

**So, I was going to have this up for you last weekend, and I was busily working on it, when something horrible happened. Writer's block! Bleah. Thanks for being patient, and I hope you enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Thirteen: Breach of Protocol

Torchwood Agent Melissa Cooper raced through the jungle, panting for breath and continually glancing over her shoulder for the pursuers that she could hear, but not yet see. She was still hoping to get out of this, to make it back to London, to her brother, but even if she couldn't, if she could just make it out of the range of the base's signal dampening field, then she could send a message back to Torchwood and warn them. Her head still reeled with the things she'd learned and been through in the past few hours, and she had no idea how to cope with it. She choked back a sob as she thought briefly of her dead teammates, back in the base, then forced those thoughts away. The only thing that mattered now was that Torchwood had to be warned, especially Director Tyler and his family.

She fumbled the odd communication device out of her pocket as she ran, mentally thanking each and every one of her lucky stars individually and by name that she was able to grab it on the way out. The odd little device, courtesy of Doctor Tyler down in R&D, would allow her to send a message to Torchwood immediately, wherever she was, like a recorded distress call off of one of those sci-fi shows her brother used to watch. That is, if she could get out of range of the dampening field.

Melissa threw another frantic glance over her shoulder as she ran, and in that brief second when her eyes weren't on the jungle floor before her, she stepped into some sort of hole and fell to the ground, crying out in pain. She clutched at her ankle, groaning, and quite sure it was broken. Well, so much for running away. Was she past the dampening field? She didn't know, but she'd just have to try. Whatever happened to her, Torchwood needed to know what was going on down here, and this was her last chance to warn them. She seized the device and activated it.

"This is Agent Melissa Cooper to Torchwood, Mayday, I repeat, mayday. I am declaring an absolute emergency. There's these people down here, and they've got this technology, it forces you to live your worst nightmares. The only way to escape it is to face your absolute worst fear before time runs out, I only just got away." She took a deep breath, realizing that the pain in her ankle was making her babble. "You have to send help, and put Torchwood on maximum alert, they're getting ready to- Wait- No! You c- Ahhh!"

0-0-0-0-0

"Doctor Tyler?"

The Doctor continued fiddling with the device in his hands, not registering that someone was trying to speak to him. He was trying to refine the latest Torchwood wrist-strap model so that it functioned as a communicator as well as a detector of alien life and technology so that the field agents would only have to carry one device into the field, rather than two. So far, limited as he was to modern Earth technology, he was having very little success.

"Doctor Tyler?"

This time, the voice cut into his concentration, causing him to hit the wrong circuit and making the device spark in his hands. He swore softly in Gallifreyan, aware that he'd ruined yet another prototype wrist-strap, and turned to face the human who had been unfortunate enough to interrupt him.

"What is it?" he asked, perhaps a bit more brusquely than he intended. Rude and not ginger, after all.

The kid before him was one of Torchwood's new recruits, and in the Doctor's opinion, one of the ones who was unlikely to ever be promoted to a field agent, or anything other than a glorified office gopher. He seemed rather excessively nervous. "Sir, Director Tyler wants to see you."

The Doctor frowned. Both the summons and the manner in which it was delivered were rather notably odd. Usually, his father-in-law left him alone at work, and if he did need him, he called down like any normal person. Something was up. He put down his work and got to his feet, shrugging off his lab coat. Ridiculous things, but the department had insisted.

"Did he say what he wanted?" the Doctor asked, his mind whirling with possibilities.

"No, sir," the kid replied. "Just that he needed to see you right away."

"Alright then, what's your name?"

"Ian, sir, Ian Jacobs."

"Right then, Ian Jacobs, don't call me sir. I'll go see the Director."

He left the kid standing in the middle of the Research lab looking a bit confused as to how he'd gotten there (definitely not going to make field agent) and headed for the elevator, punching the button for the top floor. He spent most of the ride in a brown study, trying to work out why Pete was interrupting him in the middle of the day, but was startled out of his musings when the elevator stopped part-way up and his wife got in.

"Have you been summoned, too?" she asked without preamble, greeting him with a smile.

He returned the smile and nodded in response to her question. "Any idea what he wants?"

"Dunno, but it must be important for him to pull both of us away from our work. I was teaching one of the advanced diplomacy classes, and we all know how eager he is to get those new wrist-straps issued as standard. He wouldn't interrupt without a good reason."

"Yeah, and that's what worries me. Have you heard anything new about the readings they've been picking up from Brazil?" he asked.

Rose chuckled. Ever since he'd heard of the unexplained energy readings emanating from a point deep within the Amazon, he'd been itching to find out what was causing them. She'd had to talk him out of going down there in the TARDIS and investigating them himself. "No, I haven't heard anything, but I've spent the whole week locked up with the newbies. I haven't even seen Jake recently, so you probably know more than I do."

They reached the top floor, where Pete's office was located, and automatically locked their hands together. To get to the Director's office, they had to pass through this universe's equivalent of the Canary Wharf lever room, and even after all this time, that room still made both of them uncomfortable. True, this one had housed the Dimension Cannon that had reunited them rather than the technology that had separated them, but it was still very unsettling. It was one of the reasons that Pete rarely called them into his office; he was sensitive to that.

They walked together into Pete's office to find that all of the other department heads were already present, and their nervousness ratcheted up several notches. What could possibly be so important that it would cause Pete to pull all of Torchwood's ranking agents away from their work?

Rose and the Doctor quietly took their places on the far side of the room, next to Jake, and waited for Pete to explain the situation. They did not have to wait long. After a quick look around to make sure everyone was present, Pete rose to his feet and began to speak.

"Thank you all for taking time out of your day, I know you're all busy. As I'm sure you've gathered, we have a very serious situation on our hands. I don't know how much all of you know about the situation in Brazil, but I'm going to let Jake and Amanda explain from the beginning." He gestured at the tiny little platinum blonde woman to his right, Amanda Jordan, the head of Torchwood Three in Cardiff. She tossed her long hair over her shoulder in what seemed to be a nervous habit, and began her story.

"About a week and a half ago, we started picking up some very bizarre energy readings emanating from a point so deep in the Amazon rainforest that we shouldn't have even been picking up electricity. Our instruments weren't telling us anything useful, and obviously we don't have the manpower to send a team down to Brazil to investigate, so we got in touch with Jake and Director Tyler, and requested that they send a team, which they did." She swallowed and turned to face Jake, who smoothly took over the recitation.

"I sent one of my best teams down there, and for a while, everything was fine, and they didn't find anything. Then all of a sudden, we lost contact with the team. No warning, no nothing, just silence. Shortly after the coms went dark, there was a spike in the energy readings that lasted almost a full minute, longer than anything else we'd picked up, and then it all seemed to go back to normal, but we still didn't hear from the team. Then, about an hour or so ago, we picked up this coming through on that new com device that Doctor Tyler came up with. It's pretty garbled, and we haven't had any luck clearing it up, which makes me think that something was interfering with the signal somehow. Given who designed this little gadget, I'd say that takes some doing," Jake added, with a nod of respect to the Doctor. He then reached behind him and pressed a button on Pete's desk, and a moment later, the room was filled with the sound of static, followed by snatches of a frantic female voice.

"… Agent Melissa Cooper… -day, I repeat, mayday. … emergency. … these people … and … technology, it forces … worst nightmares. The only … escape it is to face your absolute worst fear before time … only just got away. … send help, … -wood on maximum alert, … getting ready to- Wait- No! You c- Ahhh!"

Silence fell in the room as the message ended, and its meaning sunk into the minds of the people in the room. Clearly, something extremely dangerous was lurking somewhere in the Amazon, something that was worse than anything Torchwood had had to deal with since the stars were going out. A shiver ran down Rose's spine as she suddenly knew, with perfect clarity, exactly how the rest of this meeting was going to play out, and precisely what was going to come next.

"We have to send another team down there," Agent Tobin, the head of Weapons Development, spoke up from the corner. "A bigger team, made up of our best people, all armed to the teeth. And we need someone who really knows about things from other worlds, not just what we've seen here in the past twenty years or so. An actual expert."

Rose groaned mentally. Sure enough.

All eyes turned to Rose and the Doctor, as they all knew who Tobin was talking about. No one on the planet knew more about life from other worlds than they did. She chanced a look at her husband, and found that he jaw was set, and his eyes were filled with a grim light that she'd rarely seen before, only when he was dead set on protecting her, their children, or the planet. His emotions were whirling in his mind, a mixture of curiosity, eagerness, caution, fierce protectiveness, anger at whatever was causing this, and reluctance. He wanted to take the TARDIS down to Brazil and find out what was going on, but he didn't want to leave their children, and he wouldn't be going without her, even though he didn't want her anywhere near whatever this thing was. And he desperately didn't want to risk leaving their children orphans.

Rose grimaced to herself. Given the situation, it was unlikely that they were going to have any choice in the matter. In extreme circumstances, Torchwood had to send whoever had the best chance of getting the job done, regardless of how many protocols they broke in the process.

"James, Rose, does any of this sound familiar to you two? Any ideas?" Amanda asked quietly.

Rose shook her head and looked at her husband, hoping he'd know something, but he was frowning.

"There's not enough information, I'm afraid," he admitted. "I'd say that there's some sort of dampening field up that was interfering with the message, given the state it was in, and there seems to be some sort of technology working off of the human mind, showing them their nightmares, but that doesn't narrow it down very much. There are plenty of races who could have that sort of capability. Can I see your records of the energy readings? That might tell me something."

Amanda nodded and handed over a tablet with the relevant information, and the Doctor began pouring over it, his tongue pressed to the back of his teeth in concentration. The longer he looked at it, the more his frown deepened, until he finally handed it back to Amanda with a grimace.

"That doesn't tell me anything, I'm afraid. It's all too random, too chaotic. If I didn't know better I'd say someone was projecting random signals just to mess with us, because this doesn't make any sense."

Amanda sighed in resignation. "That's what we thought," she said. "So what do we do?"

"We send James and Rose down with a team to investigate. I know that's a bit of a breach of protocol, but desperate times call for desperate measures," Tobin said insistently.

Jake sighed in exasperation. "Ken, we can't just send them down like that, they've got a family to worry about. Do you really want to risk having three orphaned kids on your hands?" he asked pointedly, shooting an apologetic look at Rose and the Doctor.

Kenneth snorted. "Yeah, we've all got families and loved ones to worry about, and most of us have kids, but we also have a planet to look after here. We have to think of the bigger picture. Rose and James are the best we have, and we're going to need all the help we can get on this one. Were you listening to that message?"

"Yes, and more than you, apparently. Or didn't you hear that bit at the end, where Agent Cooper was trying to warn us to put Torchwood on maximum alert? There's something else going on, and I think we're going to need them here." Jake crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Agent Tobin. Jake had never gotten along very well with Kenneth Tobin, and Rose and the Doctor both privately agreed with his concerns. Tobin was always too aggressive, too arrogant, and was far too enthusiastic about his job at Weapons Development. Jake was angry and concerned, sure, but he was also clearly relishing the chance to pick a fight with Tobin over a legitimate issue.

"All right, you two, that's enough," Pete interrupted them. "You both have good points. Rose? James? What do you have to say about this?"

Rose turned and met her husband's eyes.

_"We're going, aren't we?" _she asked silently.

He raised an eyebrow. _"Well, annoying as he is, Tobin does have a point. There is no one at Torchwood more brilliant than us, and this could very well be a question of saving the planet."_

_ "I get that, but I don't like the idea of leaving the kids for that long while we run into danger. We've done it before, when we ran into trouble on other planets and such, but that was when we could lock them in the TARDIS and trust her to look after them."_

_ "What makes you think we can't do that now? We can't take the TARDIS to Brazil, this is way too high-profile. So, we put the kids in the TARDIS to keep them safe. Given Agent Cooper's words about 'maximum alert,' that's probably a good idea anyway."_

Rose scowled at him. _"Yes, because it's such a good idea to leave our three brilliant baby Timelords unattended in the TARDIS for an indeterminate amount of time," _she pointed out. _"I know Emma's light-years more mature and clever than the other kids her age, but she's still only eleven."_

_ "All of them, Rose, I was including Tony in that. And it's not as though your mother won't be right there. In fact, it might be better to just put the whole family in the TARDIS. We have no idea what's coming, but this way we'd know they were safe."_

_ "We'd never convince my Dad."_

_ "I know, but Torchwood will look after him, he's the Director. So, are we going?" _he asked, raising both his eyebrows.

Rose sighed internally. _"I guess we are, then." _Abruptly, Rose realized that they'd been standing there staring at each other for a bit too long. It was one habit they'd never been able to break in public, resulting in a lot of strange looks.

"Tobin's right," Rose said aloud. "We need to know what's going on down there, now, and we don't have the time to worry about protocols. James and I will take a team down and investigate."

Pete nodded, albeit reluctantly. "So be it. We'll send a team of six with you, and you can have anyone you want from the active duty rosters. If we send much more than six with you, we'll only draw attention to you, so choose well. Jake and Amanda will brief you on everything they have, and your flight to Brazil will leave tomorrow at 08:00. One other thing, I'm taking the coward's way out, and you have to explain this to your mother."

A spate of nervous laughter went around the room at Pete's weak joke. They'd all met Jackie, and they all knew just how formidable she could be when angered, or when her children or grandchildren were threatened. Mama Bear didn't even begin to describe it.

However, the situation was too serious for the moment to last, and they all quickly fell silent. Various people shifted awkwardly, then Jake spoke up.

"So, you can take six of my field agents. Who do you want? Rose probably knows most of them, she either trained them or served with them."

Rose and the Doctor looked at each other, both running through a mental checklist of the field agents they knew. After a brief pause, Rose spoke up.

"Well, I don't know about you, James, but I want Danielle Hopkins. No one keeps their head in a crisis better than Dani."

He smiled. "I definitely concur. How about Joe Connelly?"

"Yep. Josh Grant?"

"Certainly. Brandon Mulcahy."

"Good choice. Cassie Hart?"

The Doctor started to agree, but Jake broke in "You can't take Cassie, she's on maternity leave."

Rose frowned, disappointed. The team needed a medic, and Cassie was one of the best field medics in Torchwood. "How about Ethan Eddison?" she asked after a moment of thought. He was a bit annoying, but very talented.

Jake laughed. "Him you can have, do him good to get back out in the field."

Rose chuckled. "Is he making a pest of himself?"

"Not really, I can just tell that he's getting antsy, stuck around London the past couple of months."

"Okay then. James? We still need a techie, and that's more your area than mine. Who do you want?" she asked, turning to her husband.

The Doctor thought for a long moment. "Adeola Oshodi," he said finally, much to Rose's surprise.

_"Are you sure, love? It's not going to be too much to have her along? I mean, leaving aside the fact that you saw her die in the alternate universe, she looks _exactly_ like Martha. That doesn't bother you?" _she asked through their bond, her eyes showing her concern.

He sighed softly. _"She looks exactly like Martha because she's Martha's cousin, and no, I think it'll be all right. If it were Donna's alternate self, or even Martha's, it might bother me, but I'm alright with this as long as you are. Addie's very capable, and very good in a crisis."_

Reassured, Rose turned back to Jake. "That ought to take care of things, then. Let's get this team together and get everyone briefed."

As Torchwood's ranking agents filed out of the Director's office, each lost in their own thoughts and worries, no one noticed the rather misplaced grin on Agent Tobin's face.

0-0-0-0-0

Early the next morning, Rose and the Doctor ushered their family inside the TARDIS, giving them a list of last minute instructions: don't leave the TARDIS unless absolutely necessary, stay out of the engine room, don't go swimming without Tony or Jackie present, don't mess with the TARDIS console, and don't try to pilot her anywhere or anywhen. (That last was directed solely at Emma, as she was the only one who could even begin to fly the TARDIS besides her father.) Rose handed a very sleepy Sarah to her mother with a kiss on her blonde head, and she and her husband gathered the attention of their children.

"Now, you remember what we said, alright? You follow the rules, and you listen to your Gran. We'll be back just as soon as we can, and we're only just a thought away if you really need us. Okay?" The Doctor slowly met each of their eyes in turn. Sarah just gave him a sweet little baby smile, far too young to recognize the gravity of the situation, even with her enhanced Timelord mind. Mick, at seven, could tell that something was wrong, but since they hadn't told their children much, he didn't really know how bad it was. Emma, on the other hand, met his eyes with a grim look on her face as she tried to bury her fear. The situation was not good, and she knew it, and it scared her. Both her parents could feel her fear radiating from her mind, and the Doctor reached out and pulled her into his arms. A split second later, Rose did the same with Mick, and soon the entire Tyler family was clinging tightly to each other in the console room of the TARDIS.

When they finally broke apart, Jackie handed little Sarah to Tony, and he led the younger children into the depths of the TARDIS to give the adults a last moment to talk. Rose and the Doctor watched them go, trying to keep the worried looks off their faces and shielding heavily to keep their emotions from reaching their children. Rose's throat closed up and she fought back tears, praying that she and the Doctor would get back unharmed, and very soon.

Finally, the Doctor cleared his throat. "Stay safe, Jackie, and keep our children safe," he said, before his gob deserted him and he lost the ability to speak. This was the real reason he'd been so opposed to "domestics" before. He hated the idea of leaving someone behind.

"I will, Doctor, I promise," Jackie replied, just as soberly, and Rose and the Doctor both blinked in surprise. It was the first time in nearly fifteen years that Jackie had called him "Doctor" instead of "James."

He reached out and pulled both his wife and his mother-in-law into his arms, holding these two magnificent Tyler women as tightly as he could. After a moment, Jackie pulled away and started scolding him.

"Oh, you just hush, you. This is ridiculous. I'll see you when you get back, 'cause you two always find a way. Whatever this is, I know you'll sort it, and pretty soon it'll just be another one of your daft stories that I'm not totally sure I believe."

The Doctor couldn't help but laugh at that, and even Rose managed a slightly watery chuckle. "That's right, the Stuff of Legends, that's what we are," the Doctor said, his old cocky smile back on his face. Seeing that look made Rose feel better almost immediately, and she grinned at him.

"Right, we've got to get going. Mum, I love you, and you take care, okay? Hopefully we'll be back soon."

"I love you, too, sweetheart. You be careful out there, you hear me? I expect you both to come back in one piece," Jackie said sternly.

Rose hugged her mother tightly once more. "We'll be careful, Mum, I promise."

With that, Rose and the Doctor headed out of the TARDIS and locked it behind them before heading for the Torchwood airplane that would take them to Brazil.

0-0-0-0-0

The journey to the missing team's last known coordinates was hell. First, a fifteen hour flight to Manaus, Brazil, with Eddison babbling most of the way about some TV show that no one else cared about. He finally stopped when Dani threatened to duct tape his mouth shut. They took a quick rest at a touristy hotel near the airport, then a harrowing drive through the narrow, congested streets to the outskirts of the city. (Rose made a mental note to never let Connelly drive again, he was worse than the Doctor) They followed the road for as long as they could before they were forced to abandon it and hike into the rainforest itself, hauling their gear and leaving all traces of civilization behind.

They had been hiking for nearly three days, checking in regularly with Torchwood thanks to the Doctor's genius bits of tech, when they arrived at the last known coordinates of Agent Cooper's team. There was a small clearing, but absolutely no trace of human life.

"Well," the Doctor said, wiping his sweaty brow and looking around. "It seems that we're going to have our work cut out for us."

**Thanks for reading, and please review! I love getting your feedback, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 'Course, it also makes me feel guilty about how long I make you wait for new chapters, but that just makes me write faster. **


	14. Chapter 14: Worst Case Scenario

**Hello again! I present to you Chapter 14 for your reading enjoyment. I was editing this at two in the morning, so please excuse me if I missed any spelling errors or anything. **

**By the way, if any of you were only here for the fluff in earlier chapters… well, you may want to brace yourselves. There is no fluff here!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction.**

Chapter Fourteen: Worst Case Scenario

"Are you sure the coordinates are right, sir?" Mulcahy asked, gazing around. "There's no sign that anyone's ever been here, let alone the team."

"I'm sure, Brandon. The last time we hear from Agent Cooper's team, this is where they were." The Doctor heaved a sigh, then dropped his pack to the ground and pulled out the sonic to begin scanning the area.

Rose also dropped her gear, and began giving orders. "Alright, we'll use this clearing as a base campsite, it's as good a place as any. Connelly, Eddison, get the camp set up. Mulcahy, Oshodi, break out the scanning equipment and help Doctor Tyler. Hopkins, set up a perimeter, I want to know if anything comes at us. Grant, contact Torchwood and advise them of our status."

While the team scrambled to carry out her orders, Rose walked over to join her husband, pulling out her own sonic screwdriver. The Doctor had surprised her with it on her birthday about five years ago, and she'd been incredibly touched, knowing that he'd _never _made sonic screwdrivers for his companions. Just her. She placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to get his attention, but he didn't react.

_"You're worried," _she observed, breaking into his concentration. _"You let Mulcahy call you 'sir.' Is it just that there's no sign of the team, or is there something else that you're not saying?"_

He sighed. _"No, I'm not holding anything back. There should be some sort of trace of Cooper's team, though. According to Jake, they spent the night here. Now this jungle would erase the signs of their presence fairly quickly, but not this fast. And I'd still be able to pick up something with the sonic. So, either someone or something is interfering with the sonic, which is not easy to do, or someone has deliberately erased all signs that humans were ever here, which is also hard to do. Either way, these people have serious resources, whoever they are."_

_ "So, how do we find them? The team, or whoever Cooper was talking about?"_

_ "If we get anything from the scanners, we'll start there. If we don't, then we'll just have to follow the weird energy readings and hope they did the same. If they wandered off…"_

_ "Then we'll never see them again," _Rose finished grimly.

"Agent Tyler!"

Rose turned to face the team. "Yes?"

Adeola gave her a slightly apologetic look, and Rose knew she wasn't going to like what came next.

"Ma'am, we can't get anything useful from the scanners. No signs of human life, and that includes all of us. This place is just so dense with life that we can't isolate a human biosign, it's messing with the equipment. Without them, we'll have to search on foot."

"Meaning that we'll never find them," Connelly sighed. "You could hide three armies in here for a year without them ever running into each other."

"That's quite enough of that, Joe," the Doctor put in with a frown. "If we can't track the team, we'll track what they were tracking. We'll just have to follow the energy readings they were trying to investigate, hopefully that should lead us right to them."

"Yeah, hopefully," Connelly muttered under his breath. The Doctor pretended not to hear him, but Rose shot him a nasty glare. He shuffled a bit awkwardly at her glare and looked down, suitably chastised.

"Anyway," Rose began, shifting her gaze away from Connelly and looking around at the jungle surrounding them. "We'll camp here for the night, then head out in the morning. Grant, set up a watch rotation. I've got a bad feeling about this place, and I don't want anything sneaking up on us."

0-0-0-0-0

The next morning, Rose snapped awake all at once, with no transition between sleep and total awareness. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. She sat bolt upright, her eyes darting frantically around the campsite, and felt her heart stop.

Grant was supposed to have the last watch of the night, preceded by Eddison, but Grant was still snoring loudly off to one side, and Eddison was nowhere to be seen. Rose scrambled upright and yanked on her boots, feeling her husband's mind being dragged into wakefulness by her near panic.

"Rose?" he asked, a bit groggily. "What's wrong?"

"Eddison's missing," Rose said tightly, which snapped him into complete focus. "Something must have happened on his watch, because Grant's still asleep."

The Doctor let out a long string of curses in at least twelve different alien languages, and pulled on his own shoes and began scanning for Eddison's biosign while Rose woke the rest of the team.

Nearly half an hour of frantic scans and searching, they still had absolutely no trace of Eddison. It was almost as though they hadn't even brought him along, and the only evidence that they had was the abandoned pack and bedroll.

"Dani, check his equipment, see if anything's missing," Rose asked wearily, lowering her sonic screwdriver with a sigh of disappointment. How could the medic have disappeared so completely?

Hopkins nodded, and bent down to go through the abandoned equipment pack, and Rose turned to the Doctor.

"So, theories?"

He ran a hand through his hair distractedly. "Several, each more unlikely than the last," he admitted.

"Any you'd care to share?"

"No," he said honestly. "Nothing that's even remotely likely."

Rose sighed, and turned back to Dani. "Anything?"

"No, ma'am. His gun's gone, but if he was on watch, he'd've had that strapped to his hip. Wherever he is, he doesn't have much with him."

Rose made a noise of frustration. "Grant, get in touch with Torchwood. There is definitely something very wrong here."

Grant quickly obeyed and began fiddling with the coms device, but a moment later, he was cursing and smacking it with his hand.

The Doctor sighed dramatically and rubbed his eyes. "Why do I get the feeling you're about to tell us that this situation just got a whole lot worse?" he asked.

"What is it, Josh?" Rose asked.

"I can't get through, ma'am, it's like something's blocking the signal."

The Doctor crossed the little clearing in just a few long-legged strides, and pointed his screwdriver at the tech for a moment. "Try it now," he suggested, and Grant did as he was told, but to no effect.

"Dammit! It's still not working, sir,"

"Try and see if you can raise Torchwood Three in Cardiff," Dani suggested. "It's a long shot, but maybe the problem's in London, not at this end."

"Uh, I don't think that'll help," Connelly said a second later, and something in his voice made Rose bite back the comment she'd been about to make and look at him. To her surprise, he wasn't looking at the rest of the team, but staring into the forest, his hands in the air. She followed his gaze, and swore softly in Gallifreyan.

The entire clearing was surrounded by men in black, all pointing rather large guns into the circle. "All of you, hands in the air," one of them said in a clear London accent. "And you two, drop whatever it is that's in your hands," he added, gesturing to Rose and the Doctor.

Reluctantly, they both dropped their sonic screwdrivers, and the Torchwood team raised their hands above their heads in defeat. Suddenly, Rose felt her husband's mind shift, and groaned inwardly. _Here comes the Oncoming Babble, _she thought.

"Hello there, gentlemen, what's all this for? Are we trespassing or something?" the Doctor began. As he drew breath to continue, one of the men cut him off.

"Silence! You will not speak."

"That'll be the day," Rose muttered under her breath, and felt the Doctor's amusement echoing across their link.

"Oh, come on now, won't you at least tell us who you are, then?" the Doctor asked.

The one who had spoken raised his gun. "I will not warn you again, Doctor Tyler. You will remain silent, or we will shoot."

The Doctor frowned. "How do you know who I am?" he asked, all trace of joviality gone from his voice.

The mask over the man's face hid his expression, but Rose got the impression he was smirking. "You'd be surprised. Now all of you, shut up." The Doctor opened his mouth again, and the man cut him off before he could speak. "That means you, Tyler. One more word out of you and I shoot your wife."

The Doctor's mouth snapped shut and he glared at their captors. Rage pulsed through his veins at these people, this man who had threatened his Rose, and an old memory raced through his mind. _That makes things simple, very simple. _No one threatened Rose.

The man nodded in satisfaction at the Doctor's stony silence, and began snapping out orders. "Now, hands on your heads, all of you, and form a single file line. Don't try anything clever, or we'll shoot."

Reluctantly, the Torchwood team obeyed and fell into line, and the men with guns began marching them south, deeper into the rainforest. Rose's mind whirled, and she reached out for the Doctor's comforting presence through the bond. She couldn't quite articulate a specific question, just a fear laden "what now?" but he got the idea.

_"Don't worry Rose, we'll figure this out. They want us alive for now, so we may have a chance to find out who's behind all of this. Just take it easy, and try not to antagonize them."_

Rose sighed slightly. _"You don't have a plan, do you?" _she asked, her mental voice heavy with resignation.

_"Ah, no, not so much."_

_ "Well, then we'll just have to make it up as we go along. Just like always," _she replied, giving him the mental equivalent of her tongue-in-teeth grin.

_"Yep."_

Nearly an hour of steady marching brought them to their apparent destination, a giant steel trapdoor set into the forest floor and guarded by more of the black-clad gun-toting men. It looked incredibly out of place, but this far from civilization, it was highly unlikely that anyone would ever stumble across it. As the guarded team approached, the two men guarding the trapdoor saluted and pulled it open, revealing a long, deep hole with a ladder descending down into the darkness and out of sight.

"In," the guard leader snapped, reinforcing his order with a jab of his gun into the Doctor's back.

Rose shot the man a deadly glare, one that would have had any normal man cringing and apologizing, but it didn't seem to faze the faceless guards. The Doctor, not caring so much about what they did to him, just rolled his eyes and began climbing down the ladder into the hole. The rest of the team followed, and soon they were enclosed in darkness and silence. They didn't dare speak to each other, for fear that the strange guards would start shooting, and in this cramped space, there was no telling what or who they would hit.

They continued to climb down underground for what felt like ages, and finally even the Doctor lost track of how long they'd been at it. His mind wandered, and he began trying to piece together who these black-clad captors were, and what they might be doing. Fact one: They had considerable technology. The signal dampening field that had prevented them from contacting Torchwood was not easy to come by, and it had been enhanced to interfere with his sonic screwdriver. They'd also been able to avoid detection by Torchwood, so they had some sort of cloaking field. Fact Two: Those guns that the men were toting were not standard weapons from Earth at any point in the twenty-first century. In fact, they looked rather like a set of weapons that had been taken from a hostile alien invasion force about six years ago. He knew Rose had ordered that they be melted down and destroyed, but it looked as though someone had violated that order, or picked one up before Torchwood had collected them. Either way, that pointed to someone inside Torchwood itself. Fact Three: Whoever these people were, they were able to recognize both him and Rose on sight. With those things in mind, he was forced to draw some rather unsettling conclusions.

These people were not some sort of alien invasion. They were human, humans who, with some help from within Torchwood itself, had set a trap, and he and Rose had fallen right into it. Whether the trap was set specifically for him and Rose or for Torchwood in general was irrelevant. He and Rose were now the ones caught in it.

His heart clenched as he thought of their promises to Jackie and their children: that they would sort this as quickly as they could, and be back as soon as possible. That they would be careful. Little Sarah's second birthday was only ten days away, and they had sworn up and down that they would be back for that. He gritted his teeth and vowed, once again, that he would protect his wife, whatever it took. And he would get them back for Sarah's birthday.

And whatever these people were planning, he was going to stop it.

Abruptly, he ran out of rungs on the ladder and his seeking foot hit what seemed to be a dirt floor. A split second later, the tunnel was flooded with light, making him cringe as his eyes fought to adjust, and his ears picked up faint sounds of discomfort from the other team members. When he could see again, he hopped down off the ladder and looked around, finding a large metal door that seemed to have opened like an elevator. Lining the sides of the room beyond were more of the black-clad men with guns, and the Doctor bit back a sigh of frustration. Why was it always guns?

He turned his back on them and reached out to Rose, who had just reached the ground behind him. She took his hand, and they both squeezed momentarily, seeking and giving comfort and reassurance. Together, they faced the armed men and walked through the enormous door into the room beyond, heads held high. As they came to a stop in the center of what appeared to be a gathering hall for the underground quasi-military base, the sound of slow, mocking applause filled the room, originating from off to the side.

"Well, you two certainly do know how to make an entrance," a slow voice mocked from the side. "Well done, very dramatic."

"Not so bad yourself," the Doctor observed. "The underground base, hidden in the Amazon, men in black, alien weaponry, it's all very nice. So, do we get to meet the man behind the curtain? The mastermind behind all of this?"

The voice let out a low chuckle, and they heard him snap his fingers. At this apparent cue, the men on the left side lowered their guns and stepped aside, making way for a very small man. He was no taller than Rose, and had dirty blonde hair and an average, unremarkable face, with thin, wire-rimmed glasses on his nose. Rose raised an eyebrow at his unassuming appearance, but the Doctor stiffened next to her.

_"You know him?" _she asked mentally, surprised.

Very uncharacteristically, the Doctor did not answer her, but continued to stare at the small man, a dumbfounded expression on his face. Finally, he recovered his voice, and choked out one word.

"Baxter?"

0-0-0-0-0

"Agent Simmonds, I think something's happened to Doctor Tyler's team. They were supposed to check in almost an hour ago, but we haven't heard from them. I tried to contact them, but I can't get through. No one's responding."

Jake swore and kicked the nearby desk, startling the unfortunate young agent would had delivered this news. "I'll inform Director Tyler. You keep trying to reach them, and don't stop until I tell you, got that?" he snapped, and turned on his heel to head for the lift. _Why _had they all let Tobin talk them into sending the Doctor and Rose into this? It had to have been a trap. What else could possibly keep Rose and the Doctor from contacting Torchwood?

He only made it about halfway to the lift when another young agent burst around the corner, running at full speed.

"Sir!" the kid cried, breathlessly.

"What's wrong, Summers?"

"Sir, we've got intruders, dozens of them, and all of the alarms have been cut, we can't seem to warn anyone, and we can't call for outside help. Agent Suresh tried to get outside, and they gunned him down. They've cut off communications and trapped us all inside."

Jake swore again, using all of the filthy language he'd picked up in twenty years of Torchwood service. "Who are they, do you know?"

"Not exactly, sir, but they seem to be human, not aliens, and they're wearing uniforms. I didn't get a good look at the insignia, but Harris said that it looked like the symbol of that extremist group, Terra Prime? The ones who've been screaming for the eradication of all non-terrestrial life?"

Jake paled as realization hit him like a ton of bricks. This extremist group was highly xenophobic, and had been foremost in the campaign to get Torchwood to shoot first and ask questions of the corpse when dealing with alien life. These were the ones that had made him and the Tylers most nervous, because not only were they the loudest and most persistent, they were also the largest, with the greatest resources, and even had some support from members of the senate. Worst of all, there had recently been word of violent attacks on perfectly peaceful aliens visiting Earth at the hands of these extremists, as well as verbal attacks directed at Pete Tyler himself. Apparently, they were even more ambitious than anyone had realized, and Jake had a sudden moment of clarity as he realized just what the endgame of these attackers had to be.

The situation in Brazil _was_ a trap, just not for Rose and the Doctor. Whatever was happening down there had been orchestrated to get them out of London, robbing Torchwood of its most valuable personnel in this crisis. Everyone knew their record, and even Terra Prime must have known there was no way they'd ever take Torchwood if Rose and the Doctor were there to defend it.

"Summers, you get up to Director Tyler's office, and don't let anyone in or out. Protecting the Director is your only priority, you understand?"

He barely waited for the kid's salute and "Yes, sir!" before racing down the hall to gather the cavalry. He could not, _would not_, let Torchwood fall to these madmen. They had worked too hard to build this place into something they could be proud of, the Defenders of the Earth, as the Doctor had said fondly. He gathered every agent he could find, sending half of them upstairs to Pete's office. After all, he was going to be the primary target.

Besides, Rose would kill him if he let anything happen to her father.

0-0-0-0-0

Rose looked from the Doctor to the small man, who was apparently "Baxter," and frowned. Why did that name sound familiar?

Meanwhile, Baxter laughed. "So you do remember me! I'm so glad, I was afraid I would have to spend hours reminding you, but this way we can get right down to business, right James?"

The Doctor growled slightly, surprising Rose again. "I don't recall us ever being on first name terms, Baxter."

Baxter laughed again. "No, you never did like me, did you? You were afraid I was cleverer than you, that once I proved my theories Torchwood would fall at my feet and worship my brilliance instead of yours, so you sabotaged my research and never let me have facilities or test subjects. But even that wasn't enough, was it James? No, I was a threat to your position, so I had to go. You fired me because you couldn't take the competition, isn't that right?"

The Doctor snorted. "Is that what you tell yourself? Your experiments were too dangerous, that's why I never let you try them out."

"Dangerous? I'd call them innovative and cutting edge," Baxter retorted.

"You were playing around with telepathic wavelengths that you couldn't possibly hope to understand or control. You wanted to hook up human beings to your machine and use it to read their thoughts. Blatant invasion of privacy aside, you didn't even have any safety measures in place! That thing would have fried the brain of anyone you hooked up to it!"

With the Doctor's words, Rose remembered who Baxter was. While she'd been on maternity leave, pregnant with Mick, he had come home one day, fuming about a "stupid ape" in his department that was trying to get approval for experiments that weren't just risky, but would have certainly killed people, and didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with that. Over the next month, Derek Baxter had continually pestered the Doctor, making endless appeals for equipment and test subjects, to the point where the Doctor had begun to worry that Baxter would eventually act without authorization. So, he'd fired the man, had him banned from Torchwood, and even gone so far as to give the order to have him retconned, which was a step the Doctor _never _took. Erasing someone's memories was something of a sore subject for him. Under the circumstances, however, he had deemed it the lesser of two evils. After the man was released, he'd kept an eye on him for a while, to make sure he didn't make any more trouble, then moved on.

Now, it seemed that someone had circumvented the Doctor's orders seven years ago, because Baxter's memories were clearly intact. Apparently, he'd been laying low for a while, waiting for the Doctor to relax his vigilance.

Baxter smirked. "Sometimes sacrifices have to be made in the name of science."

"How did you even get out of Torchwood with your memories? I gave the order to have you retconned!" the Doctor snarled.

"Oh, so you admit telling them to remove my memories? And how is any less of an invasion of privacy than reading someone's thoughts, Doctor Tyler?" Baxter snapped.

"You were too dangerous, Baxter! You wanted to experiment on human minds! I couldn't take the risk that you'd find another way to run your tests. I didn't have a choice! Or, well, I suppose I did," he said, his tone dripping with disgust. "I could have had them lock you up for the rest of your natural life!"

"Well, lucky for me, there were others within Torchwood who understood my brilliance, and who realized how useful my research would be. My benefactor set me free, and told me I had to lay low for a while, act normal, get you off my scent. When you lost interest in me, he took me to meet his colleagues at Terra Prime, and we told them what my research could mean for defending our planetary borders. If we could read the thoughts of the aliens who invaded us, we could discover their strategies and stay one step ahead of them. And that brings me to my latest project," he said, grinning wickedly. "Once I had perfected my thought-reading machine, I got the idea to start experimenting with fear. You see, knowing what someone fears it a very potent weapon, especially if you can turn those fears against them. My Terra Prime patrons thought that it might be useful against alien invaders, so they gave me the backing to start researching. So, my current project focuses on digging out a person's innermost fears and showing them to him or her, all the while recording them for me to review later. It's quite ingenious, if I do say so myself. It's still in the early stages, so it's got a few glitches, like it doesn't seem to be able to create anything that the person doesn't fear. So, while you can throw endless spiders or robots at someone, you can't make them watch as you torture their loved ones or something. Plus, after about two hours, the person's brain can't take any more and it just implodes and they die. I'd love to find out how that Cooper girl got away…" he mused.

Rose and the Doctor both flinched as they realized simultaneously what had happened. Agent Cooper's frantic, garbled message had included a bit about "facing your worst fear before time ran out." This must have been what she meant. Baxter had been testing his nightmare machine on the missing Torchwood team.

"So, you decided to make this nightmare machine and test in on people, then you set up some sort of device to transmit the strangest energy readings you could come up with. Why? Why did you deliberately try to get Torchwood's attention like that? What do you get out of that, hmmm?" the Doctor asked, his mind whirling, desperate to know what was going on here. Why did Agent Cooper want Torchwood placed on maximum alert? What were these people planning?

"Oh, that's simple, really. My patrons at Terra Prime wanted to take over Torchwood, and since they couldn't do so by political means, they decided to try force. We all knew they'd never get to Pete Tyler with you two in the way, so my job was to concoct something that would get you out of London and out of the way. And it worked, didn't it?" Baxter crowed delightedly. "Here you are! Honestly, I thought it was going to take a lot longer to get you two out of London, but my benefactor said he could speed things along, and he was right."

"Your benefactor? Who's that, then?" Rose asked, her heart sinking. She had a feeling she knew exactly who he was talking about, judging by his last sentence. After all, there had been one man at the emergency meeting who had been very interested in making sure that she and the Doctor were sent on this mission.

"Why, Agent Kenneth Tobin, head of Weapons Development, of course!" Baxter said happily.

"Oh my God, how could he- nope, sorry, I can't even act surprised," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands. Rose had to fight down the urge to laugh at her husband's antics. This wasn't the time or the place, even if it was funny. "We've never liked him, have we Rose?"

"Nope," she agreed. "He was always way too aggressive, and it doesn't surprise me at all to learn that he's part of Terra Prime. Certainly fits his personality," she grumbled, disgusted.

"So, let me see if I've got this straight," the Doctor began, deftly adjusting his glasses. "You concoct all sorts of bizarre readings to get me and my wife out of London so that a bunch of extremists can storm the most highly defended building in Britain, with the intention of killing the most powerful man in the country, except the President, obviously. And you think that's going to get you, what, exactly? Power? Respect? No, hold on, it's not just Pete you're after, is it? No, your people storm the building, and if everything goes according to plan, you kill the Director and what, all of his ranking agents except Tobin, right? Then, as the highest ranking survivor, he takes over Torchwood and issues a press release saying that it was actually some sort of alien attack, and uses that to justify creating a Torchwood that kills aliens on sight. And anyone who might know the truth can't argue, because they are already dead. And if anyone finds out, well, it's too late, because Terra Prime already has control of Torchwood. How'm I doing, then?" he spat, giving Baxter a look which, by all rights, should have caused the little man to burst into flames.

Baxter looked a little bit impressed in spite of himself. "Not bad, James, not bad at all. It's a shame we were never going to be on the same side, two minds like ours? We could have done anything. Yes, that's just about how it's supposed to work, and my guess is it has already started. Right now, Terra Prime operatives inside Torchwood are cutting the alarms and communications, and putting the building under lockdown. Any minute now, the armed troops will be able to teleport directly inside and start shooting. So, even if you could get loose, you'd never be able to help them."

"Wait, hold on, did you say teleport?" the Doctor asked, incredulous. Torchwood's teleportation technology was still in the very early stages, to the point where the Doctor still refused to let them try and transport anything alive, as organic material always came back twisted out of all recognizable shapes. They'd transported fruit, and it had turned inside out and exploded. Where had Terra Prime gotten functional teleportation systems?

"Yes, teleport, we got it from a ship that Terra Prime shot down off the coast of Argentina about a year ago. This way, we can keep the troops here, safe, and transport them to Torchwood when we're ready."

Rose and the Doctor shared a look. So, there was a chance. If they could get to this teleport, they might be able to use it to get back to London and help. Or, if they could get to it quickly, they might be able to sabotage it and stop them from even getting to London in the first place.

"So, what do you plan to do with us, then, hmm?" the Doctor questioned. "And while we're on the subject of what you're doing with people, what did you do with Eddison?"

Baxter laughed. "Oh, Eddison wandered away from your camp for a minute, probably just trying to attend to nature's call, but he ran into one of my men in the forest. He tried to get back and warn you, but he failed, obviously, and my men brought him here to me. He only lasted two hours in the machine, just like all the others, but it was amusing to watch his fears. Did you know he was afraid of fish?"

"So you killed him," Rose snarled, wishing more than anything to be able to strangle Derek Baxter with her bare hands. He had killed people, and he thought it was funny.

"Yes, dear," he confirmed, rather offhandedly. "And that's exactly what I'll be doing with you lot as well. I still need test subjects for this machine of mine- what did you call it? My nightmare machine? I like that. Anyway, it gives me great satisfaction to be able to test one of my inventions on you, James Tyler. You tried so hard to stop me from continuing my research, but now I get to use it on you. I'd call that poetic justice."

Just then, another man, this one in regular clothing, emerged from a side door. "Mr. Baxter, sir? We just got word from the operatives in London. Torchwood's communications are down, and we're ready to teleport the troops."

Baxter grinned. "Well, send them off, then. But before you all go, I'll need a few of you to escort my new test subjects to the lab and strap them in. I might as well get started, don't you think, James?"

The response from the Terra Prime soldiers was immediate. Several of them stepped forward and seized each of the Torchwood team members, and began dragging them down a hallway to the left, with each of them kicking and fighting the entire way. Grant actually managed to get loose for a moment, but then one of the guards knocked him out with the butt of his gun and began dragging him along. As Rose and the Doctor were forced to the hallway itself, Baxter called out once more, tauntingly.

"I'll be with you in a moment, James. Believe me, it's going to be so much fun watching your nightmares!"

Rose spat a curse as they were dragged into a sick looking laboratory, where ten metal tables lined one wall, each fitted with restraints and a barbaric looking metal circle that looked like it was to be placed on a person's head. This, she thought, must be how he hooks his victims up to the nightmare machine. As her eyes rapidly took in everything in the lab, she felt a sudden pinch on her right arm and then everything went black.

**Muahaha! Evil cliffhangers! And, yes, I did steal Terra Prime from Star Trek: Enterprise. What can I say? They were exactly what I needed.**

**Thanks for reading, and please review! **


	15. Chapter 15: Fear Itself

**Guess who's not dead! **

**I am so sorry, you have no idea how sorry. Remember a few chapters ago, when I said my life had gone to hell in a handbasket and that was why I hadn't updated? Well… take that and add another suitcase full of bad. It was ugly. Anyway, I'm hoping to get back on a regular weekly schedule now that some things have cleared up a bit.**

**Someone asked if I'd give a character death warning if I was going to kill someone off, and I have to say the answer to that is no. I don't believe in giving spoilers like that. Anyway, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Fifteen: Fear Itself

Rose couldn't describe what happened next as "waking up." One minute she was being dragged into Baxter's lab, and the next she was standing on an abandoned London street. Well, it looked like she was standing on a London street, but she could tell it wasn't real. For one thing, there were posters and fliers on the brick wall beside her advertising Margaret Thatcher and bands from the late eighties. For another, there were no zeppelins in the distorted, multicolored sky. She glanced down at herself and inhaled in surprise. She was wearing completely different, very familiar clothing: the outfit she'd worn on the Dimension Cannon jumps while searching for the Doctor. She sighed and shifted uncomfortably, tugging on the blue leather jacket as all of those mixed emotions raced through her mind. She hadn't worn this jacket since returning to this universe, having been unable to look at it without remembering that incredibly difficult time in her life.

As she fiddled with the jacket, lost in thought, she almost missed seeing the small car speeding straight at her. The sudden sound of squealing tires jerked her out of her thoughts just in time for her to dive sideways out of the way. She landed hard on the concrete in an ungraceful heap and winced as she dragged herself back to her feet and watched the car speed out of sight around the corner. As her eyes locked on the small, pale colored vehicle, she realized abruptly where and when she was. She went white.

It was the seventh of November, 1987, the day her original father died. The day her stupid mistakes, meddling with time, had unleashed the Reapers. That car she had just dodged was the very same one that had killed her dad.

Panic swelled up inside of her, and she began frantically scanning the skies for any sign of the Reapers, while her mind did the only thing it could think of. She began reaching along the marriage link to the Doctor, seeking his comforting presence, only to meet a terror that easily rivaled hers. Feeling that snapped her out of her own fear, and she focused harder on the link, trying to reach through the maelstrom of the Doctor's thoughts. She strained her mind, reaching as hard as she could, feeling as though her brain was caught in an almighty tug-of-war, and then suddenly something snapped. The street vanished, and was replaced by a featureless, grey fog stretching out in every direction. A split second later, she heard a choked, smothered sound to her left and spun around to find the Doctor, dressed in his blue pinstriped suit, crouching on the ground with his face in his hands.

"Doctor!" she cried out, shocked by his apparent breakdown. His head jerked up at the sound of her voice, and a second later, she had her arms wrapped around him, and they held each other tightly.

They didn't take long with their moment of self-indulgence, however, as both were well aware of more pressing circumstances.

"How did you do that?" the Doctor finally asked, pulling away from her shoulder to meet her eyes, his face still so pale that his freckles stood out more than ever.

Rose frowned, confused. "Do what?"

"You somehow managed to pull me out of my nightmare scape and into yours. How?"

"This isn't my- what'd you call it? Nightmare scape? Anyway, this isn't my nightmare scape either, Doctor. When I woke up here, it was that street in London, the day that… my dad died," she finished quietly, and the Doctor quickly pulled her back into his arms to comfort her. After a second, she lifted her head and continued. "Anyways, I figured out where I was, and I was sort of panicking, so I just sort of automatically tried to reach out to you. But, you were just as freaked out as I was, so I started just trying to help you, and then I felt like something snapped, and we were just here."

The frown lines on the Doctor's face suddenly relaxed, and he let out an incredulous laugh. "Well, Rose Tyler, it seems like Derek Baxter's infamous nightmare machine is no match for true love," he said dramatically, placing a quick kiss on her lips. "You used our bond to merge the two telepathic projections, and so now we're sharing a nightmare scape instead of going through this alone. You're brilliant, you are," he added fondly, smiling at her. "This fog is here because the machine's not quite sure how to handle having two of us linked like this, so it's projecting nothing while it tries to compensate. We should have a couple minutes leeway, but it'll figure it out soon enough. So, what do we know?"

"Well, we know that this machine is designed to through people's worst fears at them, but it can't create anything we aren't afraid of, so we don't have to worry about seeing something happening to anyone in our family," Rose said, and they shared a look of relief at that.

"Right, and we know that this thing will probably cook our brains in two hours or so, leaving us with a pretty tight window for figuring out how to get out of here," the Doctor added, frowning again. "What was that Cooper said about escaping?"

"I think she said the only way to escape was to face your absolute worst fear before time ran out," Rose answered. "So, what are we supposed to do, then? Run around in this fog looking for Daleks?"

They looked at each other, and then simultaneously burst out laughing at the absurd mental picture her comment created. And if that laughter had a slightly hysterical edge to it, well, there was no one there to see.

They finally calmed down a few minutes later, and refocused on their predicament. Their gaze was drawn to the grey fog as it began to shift and move around them, and lost its uniformity. They gripped each other's hands tightly as the fog began to darken and solidify and faint sounds began to echo through to them.

That was all the warning they got before an entire legion of Cybermen suddenly marched out of the fog and began advancing on them, their robotic voices crying "Delete! Delete!"

"Run!" the Doctor cried, and they turned and raced away from the advancing legion, still clinging desperately to each other's hands. Rose could feel the Doctor's mind churning, and quickly caught on to his plan. They were going to put some distance between them and the Cybermen, then try to hide in the fog. But even as they ran, the fog was lifting, revealing surroundings that the Doctor never thought he would see again.

The Doctor's reaction to the dark, forbidding corridors was so deep and visceral that Rose's heart skipped a beat and she stumbled, losing her stride.

_"Doctor, where are we?" _she asked through the bond, choosing to save her breath for running.

_ "It's the Valiant," _he replied, his mental voice harsh.

Rose gulped, then shrieked involuntarily as a door crashed open to their right and a horde of Slitheen burst through, huge claws raised to slash and roaring loudly. The Doctor hauled her away from them and they ducked under the Slitheen's arms and kept running, while the huge green aliens joined the Cybermen in chasing them through the halls of the Valiant.

As they ducked around a corner, Rose glanced quickly over her shoulder and gasped. The Slitheen and Cybermen had been joined by a troop of roaring Sycorax, all armed with those ridiculous swords. _Well, at least they can't shoot us from a distance, _she thought, and tightened her grip on the Doctor's hand, grimacing as she remembered their first encounter with the Sycorax. The Doctor had lost his hand then. Although, in retrospect, that had turned out to be a good thing, as that severed hand had made it possible for the metacrisis to occur. When Rose glanced over her shoulder again, she saw that the red robed aliens were gone. _That was weird._ "_Doctor, what happened to the Sycorax?"_

_ "I don't know, but I think the machine stopped projecting them when you stopped being afraid of them."_

_ "Wish that would work on the rest of that lot," _she grumbled in reply, and felt the Doctor's mental chuckle.

Their faint amusement and relief at the slight respite vanished only a split second later as yet another alien battle cry echoed through the halls of the ship.

"For the glory of Sontar!" "Sontar, ha! Sontar, ha!"

The Doctor groaned, and Rose recognized the aliens from his memories and from the parallel world where she'd met Donna and she swore.

"Is this machine going to throw everything at us?" she panted as they rounded another corner.

"Looks like," the Doctor said with a sigh, and they continued on, running on legs that were beginning to tire. Rose wondered exactly how that worked, since they were only running in a telepathic projection, but as she dodged a shot from a Sontaran blaster, she decided they had much bigger problems to worry about.

The Doctor spotted a door off to the side, and decided to make for it, hoping they could slip through and hide from the approaching alien threats, and he pulled Rose along behind him, putting on an extra burst of speed. They burst through the door and slammed it shut behind them, leaning on it and trying to catch their breath.

It took a moment for either of them to register their surroundings, but when they did, Rose went white and the Doctor looked at her, puzzled for a split second before his memories caught up to him, and he remembered why Rose was terrified of the city of Lisbon, Portugal. She had almost died here during that time that they were separated, taking reckless chances because she was convinced that her life was over. He swallowed down the lump in his throat and turned his full attention to his wife, pulling her into his arms and comforting her as best he could.

They were given a brief amount of time to rest there, just clinging to each other and fighting back tears before the sound of huge flapping wings registered in their ears and they looked up to see-

"Reapers!" the Doctor yelled, and they took off running in a random direction as the scenery wobbled and shifted before their eyes, fading briefly back to the grey fog before solidifying into a sickeningly familiar London street. The Doctor spotted the very same church that they had hid from the Reapers in back in 1987, and they dove inside out of sheer desperation. As they hauled the enormous doors shut behind them, the sound of mocking laughter from within the church made the Doctor's blood run cold.

"We meet at last, Doctor!" the voice taunted him. "Oh, I never get tired of saying that! And look, this time you brought your favorite pretty little blond companion, the one who could absorb the Time Vortex. Isn't this sweet?"

Rose turned to face the man, and blinked in surprise. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but a slim, young-ish man with short brown hair and a ludicrous grin on his face, wearing a simple black suit was not it. She wondered just what it was about this odd little man that provoked such a strong response in the Doctor, caused his emotions to spin like a hurricane, and his hands to clench into fists, his entire body trembling.

_"Doctor, whoever he is, it's not real. This isn't actually happening, it's just a projection," _she sought to comfort him, but he didn't even seem to hear her.

"You're not here," the Doctor said, his voice shaking slightly. "You're dead. You died in my arms on the Valiant, years ago, and I burned your body. You're not here."

Rose gasped in shock as she realized who this must be.

The Master laughed. "Oh, yes, little Lucy killed me. But I'm still here, in your head, Doctor, so now your sweet little Rosie Rose gets to meet me too. Isn't that just splendid?" he cackled madly, rubbing his hands together. "Now, Doctor, where are your manners? Aren't you going to introduce me to your sweet little companion? Oh, sorry, wife. I forgot that you'd gone and gotten yourself all _domesticated,"_ the Master added, his voice dripping with scorn.

"You're one to talk," the Doctor retorted. "At least my wife isn't going to shoot me."

"Oh, that's petty, Doctor. Not at all becoming for a Timelord. What's become of you, then? You were so very mighty, sealing the rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade, ending the Time War single-handedly. Now look at you. Married to a human, playing house, working for measly little humans and hiding your true identity." The Master tutted softly. "What sort of Timelord are you? Oh wait, that's right, you're _not_ a Timelord anymore. You're a human, a pathetic, simpering little ape. You always loved them so much, and now you are one."

Rose had heard enough. No one was allowed to speak to her Doctor like that, and she couldn't stand what this "Master's" words were doing to her Doctor's mental state. The protective aspect of her marriage bond had been awake and alive from the moment they arrived in Brazil, and this kicked it into high gear.

"You're a right foul git, you know that?" she snapped, and the two Timelords turned to face her, the Master giving her a look of equal parts disdain and incredulity, while the Doctor favored her with a proud smile. She briefly caressed the Doctor's mind, then refocused her glare on the Master.

"You think you're so far above everyone else, so arrogant and superior, but what you really are is just a spoiled little brat, throwing tantrums because the other children don't want to play his games. You're the one who's pathetic. And you know what else you are? Dead. This is just a projection, and I am not remotely afraid of you."

As Rose finished speaking, there was a flash of golden light, and she briefly caught a look of panic on the Master's face as he disappeared.

The Doctor stared in shock for a few seconds, then burst out laughing and drew Rose into his arms. "Oh, Rose, you never cease to amaze me. That was brilliant, just brilliant."

She beamed into his eyes, and was just opening her mouth to say something when he kissed her forcefully, pouring all of his pride and love into that kiss. They allowed themselves to savor it for a moment, but they were soon forced back into the real world, reminded of their impending deadline by a shriek from one of the Reapers still outside, clawing to get in.

"I don't think that little trick is going to work on them," Rose commented dryly. "I'll always be afraid of them."

"Me too," the Doctor admitted. "But, we did get away from the Cybermen and the Slitheen, and we're not in Lisbon or on the Valiant anymore, so we should be able to get away from this. Any ideas?"

"No," Rose said, looking around. "They've got us trapped in here, and if we go out there they'll kill us." She stopped, and frowned. "But they're just projections, so they can't really hurt us, right?"

The Doctor sighed. "They can't hurt us physically, because all of this is happening inside our heads, but the damage that could be done to our minds could be devastating, possibly even enough to cause them to shut down. I'd rather not risk it."

Rose sighed in agreement. "Well, we got off the Valiant and into Lisbon by going through a door, so let's try a couple and see if we end up someplace else."

"It's as good a plan as any. Allons-y!" He took her hand and, they began to explore the church.

The first two doors they tried just led them to other parts of the church, and the third revealed an enormous monster that Rose didn't recognize, but that caused the Doctor to swear and slam the door shut again. Ordinarily, she would have asked what it was, but she figured now was not the time, and filed that thought away under "things to ask the Doctor later." The fourth door they tried should have led down into the crypt, but instead they hit pay dirt. Rather than dusty, cobwebbed stairs, they found themselves in some sort of metal corridor. It was rather dark and forbidding, but it wasn't crawling with Reapers, so they went through the door and shut it behind them. Instantly, the sounds of the Reapers' shrieking ceased, and silence fell.

"Where are we?" Rose asked, peering into the darkness around them with a frown.

"I'm not entirely sure," the Doctor replied, echoing her frown. "This is a pretty standard design for a space base, they build these things out of kits, you know-" He stopped, and they shared a look of horror.

"Sanctuary Base Six," Rose stated, her fear clearly visible in her eyes and echoing from her mind. "This is Sanctuary Base Six, Krop Tor, the lump of rock suspended in perpetual geo-stationary orbit around a black hole, which just so happens to have _Satan_ chained up in a pit below the planet's surface."

The Doctor didn't even stop to look at her ghost-pale face and unnaturally wide eyes, just pulled her into his arms and tried to soothe her. She was shaking like a leaf, and clinging desperately to him like a lifeline, too terrified to let go. She may not have ever laid eyes on the Beast herself, but her experiences with Toby and the possessed Ood had been more than terrifying enough. Then, when she'd bonded with the Doctor, she'd seen the Beast itself in his nightmares and had promptly woken up screaming. The Doctor opened their bond further and slipped more fully into Rose's mind, blanketing her in his soothing presence and projecting comforting thoughts, trying to take the edge off him that her fear.

He was just starting to make progress when the sound of footsteps informed him that they were not alone. He reluctantly pulled out of Rose's mind and grabbed her hand, urging her to run.

They made it about ten feet down the corridor before they hear the irritating computer voice.

"Open door three," it chimed blandly, and the door ahead of them swung open, and the red-eyed Ood began to march through it, chanting in a perfect, eerie unison.

"He is awake, and you will worship him. He has woven himself in the fabric of your lives since your lives began, since the dawn of Time. Some may call him Abbadon. Some may call him Krop Tor. Some may call him Satan. He is the harbinger of despair, the deathless prince, the bringer of darkness."

Rose let out an involuntary cry as the Doctor pulled her back the way they had come, swearing like a sailor. Again, they made it no more than a few feet when another door opened, the same one they'd come in through. Instead of more Ood, however, what came through the door was Toby, his eyes glowing red and his face and hands covered in the strange letters that had defied translation.

"These are the words of the Beast," he said, his face split in an insane grin. "And he has woken."

With the Ood on one side and Toby on the other, they were trapped. They stood, frozen in place while the advancing Ood told them that they would worship the Beast, and Toby channeled the voice of the Devil.

"Doctor?" Rose asked, her voice shaking. "Tell me you have a plan, a strategy, and ace up your sleeve, something." She caught hold of his arm and clung to him tightly, her fingers curling into the sleeve of his jacket, her grip so tight it threatened to rip.

"Rose, quick, the last time on Krop Tor, how did you immobilize the Ood?" he asked, spinning to face her.

"Um, Danny flipped the monitor, broadcast a telepathic flare. It knocked them out."

"Right." With that, the Doctor placed his fingers on her temples, closed his eyes, and _concentrated_ with all his might.

For a split second, nothing happened, and then Rose felt her and the Doctor's minds stretching, and then the entire room exploded in a flash of white light.

In that instant, everything turned upside down and inside out, a thousand different colors flashing before Rose's eyes as everything dissolved. Nothing was real, save for the Doctor's hands still on her temples. She vaguely heard someone screaming, then realized a moment later that it was her.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the chaos stopped. Rose's scream ceased as though someone had flipped a switch, and she tentatively opened her eyes as the Doctor's hands dropped away from her head. The first thing she saw was her husband's grinning face, but a second later she recognized the featureless grey fog that had surrounded them before, just after she'd connected their nightmare scapes.

"What in the name of Rassilon did you do?" she asked, breathless.

He grinned at her, his insufferably smug look making her want to smack him. "I used our bond to magnify my telepathic range, and broadcast a flare, just like Danny did with the monitor, only bigger. Although," he paused, looking around with a slight crease between his eyebrows. "I have to admit, I wasn't expecting it to work quite this well. All I was expecting was that the Ood would collapse and we would be able to run from Toby. Instead, it seem that this machine of Baxter's is not really equipped to handle telepathy from within. I seem to have shorted it out. Not completely, or we would have woken up in the real world, but it'll take a few minutes for it to reassert control."

Rose stared at him for a moment, then grinned and shook her head. "You're amazing, you know that?"

"Well," he said, smirking. "I am brilliant."

"Aren't you just," she replied, and reached up to drag his head down to hers, tangling her fingers in his hair and planting a truly intense kiss on his lips. She briefly felt him smile, and then he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly and returning that kiss with unbridled enthusiasm.

"Exterminate!"

Instantly, they broke apart and ducked, franticly looking around for the Dalek, and found themselves on the Gamestation, with at least a dozen Daleks pointing their weapons at them.

"Looks like the machine fixed itself a bit faster than you thought it would, Doctor," Rose commented as they ducked and ran for their lives, narrowly missing extermination at least a dozen times.

"A bit, yeah," he agreed, and they raced down a corridor ahead of the Daleks, not really running in any particular direction, just _away._

"So, this is it, right? I mean, this is the worst thing he can throw at us right? Nothing's scarier than the Daleks?" Rose asked, panting a bit.

"I think so, we just have to hold on a bit longer, and we should wake up in Baxter's lab with about twenty minutes to spare, give or take a bit. Depends on how long we have to run from the Daleks before the machine decides we've 'faced' them."

"Right then. We can do this."

"Yes, Rose Tyler, we can and we will. Allons-y!"

They dodged through the lifts and corridors of the Gamestation with renewed energy and determination, the light at the end of the tunnel sending a charge through them as they ran. However, as the Doctor's internal time senses told him that they were ticking closer and closer to their deadline, nothing changed. They were still on the Gamestation, still being chased by Daleks, still dodging exterminator beams. There was no end in sight.

"What's going on, Doctor? Why haven't we woken up yet?" Rose panted.

"In here, quick!" The Doctor said, jerking open a door and dragging her through it, slamming it shut behind him. It was a tiny little room, probably a storage closet, but they desperately needed a chance to catch their breath, and it was the best he could come up with. "I don't know," he said a moment later, in answer to her questions. "All the things we've faced, or that I've faced in my life, I've never met anything that terrified me more than the Daleks."

"Me either, so why are we still here? What could possibly be worse than them?"

"I really don't know," he panted, missing his respiratory bypass more than ever at that moment. Feeling a new surge of fear from Rose's mind, he quickly reached for her, cupping her face in his hands. "Whatever it is, Rose, we'll face it together, love. The old team, right? Shiver and Shake? There's nothing we can't handle together." He kissed her forehead gently, tucking her hair behind her ears, then drew back to smile at her.

She felt herself smiling in return, almost an automatic response to the Doctor's expression, and then suddenly realization hit her with the force of a cement truck. "Oh, God," she gasped, pulling away from him abruptly.

"What, what is it? Rose, you're scaring me, what's going on?"

"I know why we're still stuck here, why we can't get out. My worst fear isn't Daleks or Cybermen or the Beast in the Pit, and neither is yours, and it's not the Master or some monster you faced before you even met me."

"Rose, what are you saying?"

Shaking, she lifted her gaze and looked him in the eye. "My worst fear is losing you."

**Dun dun DUN! **

**Thanks for reading, and please review!**


	16. Chapter 16: Courage

**Yeah, I know. I am evil. For the record, so is writer's block. And so are finals. Bleagh.**

**Anyway, I present Chapter 16 for your reading enjoyment, hope it was worth the wait. Only two chapters left in this story, then on to the next installment of the saga. **

**Speaking of which, I'm having a bit of trouble deciding which part to write next. I'm planning a sequel (more than one, actually), but I'm also planning to write a prequel, detailing Rose's adventures in the parallel world after Canary Wharf. I can't decide which I should write first, so I'm going to put up a poll on my profile page. Please go vote and tell me what you think, or let me know in a review or message. I can't guarantee that I'll follow the poll results, as the muse may decide otherwise, but I still want to know what you think. Thanks!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Sixteen: Courage

The Doctor stared at her, his face pale. "I know, Rose, and it's the same for me, you know that. I could never stand to lose you," he said, taking her hands in his. "But, love, Baxter himself told us that his machine can't throw anything like that at us, it can't create anything that we're not afraid of."

"I know, but don't you see? It doesn't have to. You're already here, I used our bond to pull you into my nightmare scape, I merged the projections," Rose pointed out, her voice rising steadily in direct correlation with her increasing panic. The Doctor pulled her into his arms, and she buried her face in his jacket. "This is all my fault," she choked out.

The Doctor scowled briefly, and pulled slightly away from her, placing both hands on her shoulders and forcing her to look him in the eye.

"Now, you listen to me, Rose Tyler," he began, and she flinched slightly at the note of steel in his voice. "In no way is any of this your fault. Even if you're right, and you may very well be, you had no way of knowing this could happen."

Rose nodded shakily, convinced by the conviction she could feel from his mind, and hid her face in his jacket again, one hand clenched into a fist around his lapel.

"So, what are we going to do?" she asked, her voice muffled.

He held her tightly, one hand gently stroking her hair, but didn't answer her right away. He had a pretty good idea what he'd have to do, assuming Rose was right (and he was), but Rose was not going to like it. He had to admit, he wasn't very fond of the idea himself, but there wasn't time to find another solution. His time senses were telling him that they had less than five minutes, and the burning headache behind his eyes was clear evidence of the strain his mind was under.

As his thoughts whirled through his head, he began to notice that Rose had stiffened against him, and had to fight back a groan when he realized that she had heard his entire internal monologue.

"You can't be serious!" Rose cried out, pulling away to stare at him, shocked.

"Rose, we don't have a choice. We have to do this, and it has to be now. We don't have time to find another solution."

"But what if it doesn't work? What if something really happens to you? I can't do this without you!"

The Doctor sighed. "We're just going to have to take that chance. If it doesn't work, well…" he stopped, swallowed, and skipped the rest of that sentence. "If it kills me, then you get the team back to London, stop Terra Prime. And take care of our children for me."

Rose opened her mouth, fully intending to protest loudly and vehemently, but before she could get out a single word, the Doctor seized her face in his hands and crashed his lips into hers. He swallowed her gasp of shock, kissing her fiercely, his desperation evident in every movement he made. Rose's mind blanked out completely, swept away by the sheer force of the Doctor's emotions filling her head through the bond, to the point where she almost couldn't feel his lips at all. Almost.

As abruptly as the kiss had begun, the Doctor pulled away from her, leaving her head spinning. Before she could gather her wits, he was racing out of their hiding place in the storage closet. Panic swept through her and she raced after him, but she was too late.

"It is the Doctor!" "Exterminate, Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!"

"Doctor!" she screamed, and watched helplessly as the beam hit him squarely in the chest, and he collapsed.

Instantly, the world seemed to bend and flip, turning inside out before her eyes. The colors changed, and her vision became wildly distorted, and then everything went black.

0-0-0-0-0

"Sir! We've retaken the secondary research lab, and we managed to hold them off and keep them away from the armory."

"Good to hear, Harris, now give me a casualty report," Jake ordered, changing out the magazine in his gun.

"Not sure, sir, haven't gotten any new reports from the infirmary since the last time I updated you," the youngster replied.

Jake sighed. "What's the situation on the Director's office?"

"No change, he and his wife are still in there, under siege, but the agents up there with them are putting up one hell of a fight. No one's getting in or out. Stalemate."

"She sure picked a hell of a day to come and see him, didn't she?" Agent Branson snorted from Jake's other side. He glared at the girl, and she bristled. "I'm just saying…"

"Yes, Branson, thank you for your opinion," Jake snapped.

"What do we do, sir? Head up there to reinforce the Director, or down to Processing?" Harris asked. "I know there are aliens down there, we've got that Targalian family whose ship crashed last week, and I know there are others. These Terra Prime bastards won't hesitate to kill them."

"Yeah, but they're trying to kill the Director, too," Branson pointed out.

"He's got at least a dozen agents up there protecting him, plus that wife of his could probably kill them with a glare."

"All right, you two, that's enough," Jake snapped again, tired of their bickering. "And don't talk about Jackie like that, Agent Tyler catches you doing that and she'll flay you alive."

"Yes sir," they both muttered, and looked at him expectantly, waiting for orders.

Jake was torn. On one hand, with the Director, Rose and the Doctor unavailable, he was the default leader of Torchwood, and it was up to him to defend the perfectly peaceful and, in this case, helpless alien visitors to their planet. The Doctor would kill him if he let anything happen to them, and Agent Harris was right. Terra Prime wouldn't hesitate to kill any alien they found, even the toddlers from the Targalian family. On the other hand, if Terra Prime succeeded in killing the Director, Torchwood could very well lose the political support that Pete Tyler had painstakingly built up for the past twenty years. It _probably_ wouldn't be the end of Torchwood, not if there was anyone left standing, but it would still be a disaster of monumental proportions, especially if the government decided to appoint its own head of Torchwood. Plus, if he let something happen to her parents, Rose would kill him very dead.

He sighed, feeling a headache coming on. _Damned if I do, and damned if I don't, _he thought, and in the next second, he decided.

"Down to Processing. Like Harris said, the Director's got help, and he can take care of himself. Those alien kids downstairs are helpless, and we promised them and their parents we'd take care of them. Now let's go, shift!"

The agents surrounding him in the corridor scrambled to their feet and made for the nearest stairwell, hoisting their weapons, and maintaining full alert status. Jake spared a single thought to marvel at how well they responded under pressure, and to make a note to compliment them and Rose for her training regime, then took up point, leading his assembly of agents downstairs.

They'd almost made it down to the sixth floor when the door to the stairwell opened, and Agent Tobin stepped through.

"Tobin!" Jake snarled. "Where the hell have you been, Aruba? We need every agent in the building to-"

"Jake, there's no time to explain. Come with me, there's a lot more to this than just a simple assault, and I need your help." Tobin interrupted him.

Jake hesitated for a second, not totally convinced he should listen to him, then swore under his breath. "Harris, Branson, take these agents with you and go on ahead. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with you soon. In the meantime, secure the area, then send reinforcements up to the Director's office."

"Yes sir!"

As Branson and Harris led the troops down the stairs, Jake glared at Tobin as he walked through the door to the seventh floor, Tobin following behind him.

"All right, Ken, what's so damn important? What do you need from me?" Jake asked irritably.

He heard a faint click and whirled around, to find Agent Tobin pointing a gun directly at his head, and wearing a satisfied smirk.

"I need you to die."

0-0-0-0-0

Rose jerked awake with a scream, thrashing about and barely even noticing the shower of sparks from the equipment near her head. As the system shut down, the restraints gave way and shot upright and off the table, frantically scanning the room for her Doctor. A second later, she spotted him, tied down to the table next to her, eyes closed, and face twisted into a grimace of pain. She scrambled over to him, and found that he was still hooked up to the machine, still trapped in the nightmares. She snarled, then lunged for the monitor beside him, searching for the off switch. Finding nothing, she whirled around, scanning the room, and found what appeared to be an emergency shut-down on the far side of the room. She ran to it faster than she'd ever run in her life, and yanked down the lever, causing all of the monitors to emit the same shower of sparks she'd woken up to. When she got back to her Doctor's side, he was stirring, and he quickly began to fight his restraints.

"Hold on, Doctor, I've got you," she said hurriedly, and pulled the barbaric headset off him and began working on his restraints, sparing a thought to wonder why they hadn't just given out as hers had. She freed him from his restraints, and he lurched off the table immediately, his balance shaky, and she had to grab him to keep him from falling over.

"Whoa! Easy, take it easy, it's okay, I've got you," she soothed him, draping his arm over her shoulders and wrapping both of hers around his waist to hold him upright.

"Rose?" he croaked out, seeing her for the first time.

"Yeah, it's me. We're out, it worked."

A shadow of his usual grin crossed his face, followed shortly by a wince, and he held one hand to his head, pressing his fingers to his temple. "Ouch," he said, intelligently.

Rose frowned. "Are you okay?"

He took a minute to consider her question, then finally nodded. "Give me a minute or two and I will be. My head just wasn't sure how to deal with that, needs a few minutes to recover."

Rose sighed in relief, and helped him sit down on the table again, before gently cupping his face in her hands. She placed her fingers on his temples, and gently began to massage, taking great satisfaction in his closed eyes and the look of relief on his face. Slowly, the pain creases around his eyes began to smooth, and he opened his eyes again, meeting her gaze.

"Thanks," he said, his voice low as he leaned in toward her, placing his hand on her cheek.

"Anytime," she whispered, just before their lips met.

As they kissed, they opened their bond as far as it would go, to the point where there was no telling where one ended and the other began, and clung tightly to each other, both physically and psychically, desperate to reassure themselves.

"Rose," the Doctor murmured softly against her lips, and she sighed, finally feeling complete again. They finally broke apart, slowly, and stared into each other's eyes for a moment, breathless but smiling.

Then, without warning, Rose hauled off and slapped him across the face.

"What? What was that for?" he spluttered indignantly, one hand raised to his cheek.

"Don't you ever do that to me again!" Rose hissed through clenched teeth. "Never, you understand? I had to watch you die, you- you- you-" she struggled to get her angry words out around the lump in her throat, and finally gave up and buried her head in his shoulder. "Just promise me you won't do anything like that ever again," she demanded, her voice muffled.

He wrapped his arms around her, and murmured into her hair. "I promise."

"Hey, look, this is really great entertainment and all, but could you guys stop staring at each other and get the rest of us out of these restraints? We're probably going to have company any minute now," Connelly suddenly spoke up from the other side of the room, startling Rose and the Doctor into breaking apart. When they turned, they found five pairs of eyes watching them, tired but fascinated.

Blushing, they sprang apart and made short work of the team's restraints, ignoring the good-natured teasing that they were getting the entire time. When the team was free, they stood in the center of the room, and everyone faced Rose the Doctor, most of them hiding smiles at their clasped hands.

"Right now, everyone all right?" the Doctor asked, meeting each of the team members' eyes in turn.

"Shaken, but alive," Hopkins spoke up, and the rest of the team nodded in agreement. "Thanks, by the way. How did you get us all out of there?"

"It was Agent Cooper's message," Rose explained. "There was a bit in there about 'facing your worst fear,' and we guessed that's what she meant. Turns out it worked, and we owe her our lives. I just wish we could thank her." The Doctor squeezed her hand in comfort, and she looked up at him gratefully.

"Right, then," the Doctor said, breaking into the silence that had fallen at Rose's words. "We've got work to do. We've got to get out of this room, get back to London, stop Terra Prime from taking over Torchwood, and make sure they can never hurt anyone again. Questions? Anyone have a suggestion as to where we should start?"

"I've got one," Grant spoke up from the far side of the room, where he'd opened a large metal chest and was staring into it with a grim expression. A moment later, he pulled out a Torchwood issue handgun and cocked it, then pointed it directly at Baxter's nightmare machine and began firing. It wasn't until his magazine was completely empty and the machine was smoking and destroyed past all hope of repair that he turned around and met the eyes of the rest of the team, his face set, and his normally sparkling eyes hard as steel. He seemed to be waiting for someone to challenge what he'd just done, but no one had any intention of doing so.

After a grim silence, Oshoni squared her shoulders and spoke. "Well, now that that's taken care of… Josh, are there any of the rest of our guns in there?"

Grant stuck his now-empty gun into his holster and went back to the chest to have a look. "Yeah, all of them. Here." He pulled four more handguns out of the box and began passing them around to everyone except Rose and the Doctor, who refused to even touch them. He reached back in a moment later, and made a triumphant noise as he discovered the spare magazine he'd had on him when they arrived, and he quickly loaded it into his gun.

"Anything in there besides guns?" the Doctor asked pointedly.

"No sir," Grant replied.

"Don't call me sir, Josh. Now, everyone who's not having fun here, follow me. We need to find that teleporter, it's the only way we'll be able to get back to Torchwood."

They had taken only three steps to the door when it burst open and half a dozen Terra Prime soldiers poured into the room and began firing. With a yelp, the Doctor, pulled Rose to his chest and shielded her with his body, dragging her down into the relative shelter behind one of the tables. The rest of their team dove for cover before firing back, making Rose and the Doctor both cringe. These were human beings, not Daleks, and so the firefight made them both sick to their stomach. A moment later, they heard Adeola cry out in pain, and they jerked around to see her clutching her arm, which was bleeding profusely. The Doctor scrambled over to her, narrowly avoiding being shot himself, and seized her arm to examine the damage done. Fortunately, it was only a graze, so he pulled a length of bandaging out of one of his bigger-on-the-inside pockets and secured it quickly.

"This won't hold long, but hopefully it won't have to," he told her, shouting over the continuing sound of gunfire. "It's not bad, they'll fix you up in no time when we get to the infirmary back home."

She gasped in pain, but nodded. "Thanks, Doctor Tyler," she said through gritted teeth.

"Can you hold together for me, Addie?" the Doctor asked, holding her eyes for a moment.

"I'll be fine, sir."

"Come on, Addie, you should know better than to call me 'sir' by now," he joked, trying to take her mind off the pain in her arm, and wishing he had the materials to do more for her.

Just then, the sounds of gunfire ceased abruptly, and the Doctor raised his head to have a look.

All six Terra Prime operatives were dead, and the only injury on the Torchwood side was Adeola's arm.

"Score one for Torchwood, then," Connelly said, his voice tired but elated.

Rose and the Doctor both glared at him, but it was Rose who spoke. "If you think having to kill six human beings is something to celebrate, then fine. Score one for Torchwood. Personally, I'd be more willing to give points for avoiding the gunfight rather than killing the other side."

The Doctor gave her a look of approval, and Connelly had the grace to look a bit ashamed of himself. For a moment, no one moved or spoke, then Mulcahy broke the silence.

"What's our next move, then?" he asked.

"We have to find this teleport of theirs and get back to London. Everything depends on holding Torchwood, so we have to get back and help," the Doctor replied, taking Rose's hand again.

"What about this place? We can't just leave it, shouldn't we be trying to do something before we leave?" Grant asked.

"We don't have time. Rassilon knows what damage these bastards have done in the last two hours, and like James said, everything depends on holding the Torchwood Tower and protecting the Director right now. We can deal with this place later. Besides, the way Baxter was talking earlier it sounds like most of their personnel teleported to London, and we can deal with them there," Rose explained.

"Rassilon?" Mulcahy asked Hopkins in an undertone.

"Don't ask," she replied, just as quietly. "Nobody knows, and they never answer."

Rose and the Doctor fought down smirks and pretended not to hear this little exchange, choosing instead to lead the team out of the laboratory to look for the teleport device. Just down the hall, they found a computer terminal, and the Doctor quickly began typing, muttering under his breath. Rose caught a variety of sentiments, some in English, some in Gallifreyan, including a lament for his missing sonic, complaints about lack of organization on the Terra Prime system, and no few curses, some of which made him sound more like Donna than he had in years.

"You know, for people who claim to hate all things alien, these stupid apes sure like using alien technology," he grumbled finally, loud enough for the whole team to hear. "Their system is powered by tech from just about every alien species that has visited or attempted to invade Earth in the past twenty five years. Including the Cybermen."

At that, Connelly hissed through his teeth, but didn't say anything. Rose spared him a sympathetic smile, and went back to watching over the Doctor's shoulder as he worked, though her mind was on Joe.

Joseph Connelly had been a teenager at the time of the first Cyberman invasion, and had lost his mother, his sister, his best friend, and nearly everyone he loved. It had destroyed him, and he had devoted his life to fighting the remaining Cybermen with Torchwood just as soon as he was old enough. No one hated the Cybermen more than he did, and to find that humans were using Cyber-tech was a personal affront to him. Rose sighed internally, hoping that he wouldn't let his judgment be impaired by this new information.

"Ha!" the Doctor said suddenly, cutting into her thoughts. "Found the schematics for the base. Nice and detailed, thank you Terra Prime, so I know exactly where we are going. Also, it seems Rose was right. Aside from us, there are only three life signs left in the entire base. The bad news is that they are all in the room that houses the teleportation system."

"We'd better shift, then," Rose said. "Lead the way."

The Doctor nodded and took her hand, then beckoned to the team over his shoulder and headed off down the hall. The team had only made it around the first corner when an alarm began to blare, startling them all. A moment later, a tinny, computerized voice came over the intercom.

"Warning. Self-destruct sequence initiated. All personnel report to Section Thirty-One for immediate evacuation. Repeat, self-destruct sequence initiated."

"What?!" the Doctor yelped. "This is an underground base, not a spaceship. What are they doing with a self-destruct?"

"Never mind that now, Doctor, we've got to get out of here! What's Section Thirty-One?" Rose asked frantically, almost yelling to be heard over the repeating warning message.

"It's the teleportation system, we were going there anyway. That message must be set to play automatically if the self-destruct is activated, there's hardly anyone here besides us. Come on, run!" he cried, and took off at full speed, yanking Rose along behind him. She spared a glance over her shoulder, to make sure the team was following and that Addie was holding up all right, and was relieved to find that they were. She hardly expected anything else from them, but still.

The Doctor led the team around another corner and burst through a large door labeled "Section Thirty-One," then stopped dead in his tracks, causing Rose to bump into him. She opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, then shut it abruptly as she took in the scene before her.

Nearly all of the machinery in the room had been smashed up and was emitting sparks, the damage to the systems enormous. It looked as though someone, likely Baxter, had done his very best to ensure that they were unable to use the teleport system to escape the impending destruction of the base.

"Oh, hell," Rose said angrily, following that with a long list of Gallifreyan curses stolen from her husband. "Doctor, is there anything you can do?" she asked.

He gazed around at the wrecked machinery, and his mouth set into a grim line. "Let's see what's not fried, and let me figure out what I have to work with," he replied, his voice clipped and terse. He strode quickly over to the one computer terminal that didn't appear smashed beyond all recognition, and leaned over it to begin typing in commands. However, the very first key he pressed caused a video recording to pop up on the monitor, and he swore at the sight of Baxter's smug, grinning face.

"Hello, James. I really hope it is you watching this, or else this won't be nearly as much fun. As you can no doubt see, I've set this base to self-destruct on a ten-minute timer. Since Terra Prime will have Torchwood, we won't need this little backwater hole-in-the-ground anymore, and it would be a shame if anyone found anything here, so my benefactors thought it best to simply destroy this place. It's a pity about my machinery, I was supposed to have the time to salvage it and bring it along, but your little friend denied me that, so now I'll have to start from scratch." Baxter paused, and sighed dramatically before continuing on. "Well, maybe by starting over I can fix some of the glitches. Anyway, you should also know that I've put the entire base on lockdown. No one can get in or out except by this teleportation system behind me. Unfortunately, you won't be able to use it to follow me, as I've planted a little bomb to blow it up after I arrive safely in London." He grinned. "Have a good death, James."

With that, the screen went dark. The Doctor stared at it for a split second, then burst into a whirlwind of action that was very familiar to Rose, but took the rest of the team by surprise as he babbled away, seizing wires and beginning a frantic repair job, desperate to get the system working again.

"This isn't going to be pretty, just a messy jury-rig of the system, but Baxter didn't destroy it as completely as he thought he did. If I can just get this thing to- Rose, hang me that, will you? –just get this thing working again, I can still get us out of here. Oh, what I wouldn't give for my sonic –Rose, come here and hold that. Addie, go over to that computer and stand by. When it asks for the base-code, tell it to oscillate four and nine." As he alternated between babbling and barking out instructions, the rest of the team watched, stunned, as he actually began to get the teleport working again. Finally, he kicked the bottom of the machine and it booted up, causing him to grin in triumph.

"Right then. Two minutes to spare, brilliant! Now, all of you over here, and let me set this thing to take us back. The coordinates for the Torchwood Tower are still locked in, so I all need to do is just- oh." He stopped suddenly, and his triumphant grin slid off his face. Rose felt his emotions turn black, and she bounded off the teleport pad and over to him.

"What? What is it, what's wrong?"

He sighed, and pulled his glasses off to rub at his eyes before putting them back on and meeting her gaze. "The damage to the system, it's too extreme to allow me to set it on a delay, or anything else. It can still teleport us home, but it'll have to be operated manually."

"So, one of us will have to stay behind," she said softly.

The Doctor sighed again, and took her hands. "Rose, I know I said-"

"No!" She cut him off fiercely. "Don't you even think about finishing that sentence! I am not going to leave you here! Either we go back together, or we both stay, and that's the end of it. I watched you die once today already, and I won't do it again," she hissed, fire blazing in her eyes.

"Rose, love, there isn't time to argue this. Our children need you, your parents and your brother need you, and Torchwood needs you. You have to go back."

"And all of that is just as true of you as it is of me," she snarled. "I am _not_ going to lose you."

"Rose-" the Doctor began, cupping her cheek in his hand, but he was interrupted by Connelly speaking from the other side of the room.

"With respect, sir, I think that staying behind is my job, not yours. You have a family, and you're one of the highest ranking members of Torchwood. I'm just another field agent, and I have no one to go home to. So, show me what to do." Joseph Connelly stepped off the teleport pad and squared his shoulders, meeting the Doctor's eyes unwaveringly.

"Joe… I can't let you do this. I can't let you give up your life like this," the Doctor pleaded softly.

Joe snorted. "You'd be giving up a lot more than me," he pointed out. "Look, sir, I grew up without a father, even before the Cybermen destroyed my life. Don't let your children do the same."

The two men's eyes locked in a brief contest of wills, but finally the Doctor surrendered. "I can't believe I'm going to let you do this," he muttered, and beckoned the other man over. He quickly showed him how to use the controls, and ushered Rose up onto the platform with the rest of the team.

"Is there anything we can do for you? You know, back home?" Rose asked Joe tentatively, fighting back tears.

Joe smiled. "Just save Torchwood, ma'am, and go on defending the Earth. Oh, and maybe put my name on a plaque somewhere so that somebody remembers my existence."

"Consider it done," the Doctor said solemnly, and the rest of the team snapped to attention, saluting their friend. A moment later, Joe activated the teleport, and Rose caught one last glimpse of his face through the flash of blue light. To her surprise, he was smiling.

0-0-0-0-0

The team materialized in the Torchwood Tower a moment later, all clutching their heads and groaning.

"Oh, rough teleport," the Doctor grumbled, then wrapped his arms around his wife.

_"I'm sorry, Rose. We'll have to mourn him later, right now we have work to do," _he said silently, sending a pulse of sympathy and love across their bond. She tightened her grip on his jacket for a split second, then released him, nodding and brushing her tears away from her eyes.

"Right. Where are we, then? Where did the teleport come out?" the Doctor asked, leaping into action mode.

"Looks like Weapons Development, seventh floor," Mulcahy observed, looking around.

"Makes sense," Rose spoke up. "They'd want to appear somewhere that they already controlled through Tobin. They'd be a lot less likely to set off alarms that way."

"Right. We need to find the Director. Hopefully, he's in his office, that's just about the easiest room to defend in the entire Tower. Come on then, shift!" the Doctor urged them, and they headed for the stairs at top speed.

As they rounded the corner that led to the stairwell, they stopped dead, stunned by the sight of Kenneth Tobin holding a gun to Jake's head. Neither man noticed that they were no longer alone, being far too busy glaring at each other.

"Do you really think you're going to get away with this, Tobin? Attempting to assassinate the Director of Torchwood, allying yourself with Terra Prime, trying to take over Torchwood… You're going to pay for what you've done, and what you tried to do," Jake was saying in a hard voice, his accent thicker than ever in his anger. "Even if you kill me, my agents are still going to tear you apart. And when Rose and James get through with you, you're going to wish you'd never been born."

Tobin smirked. "Ah, but here's what you don't know, Simmonds. Doctor and Agent Tyler are dead, and the Director will be soon enough. There'll be no one left who suspects me, and I'll be well placed to take over Torchwood, since I'll be the highest ranking agent left alive." He pressed the muzzle of the gun into Jake's forehead, and hissed into his face. "I've been waiting for this for a long time, Simmonds."

Jake's eyes closed, and he gritted his teeth, waiting for the shot. Just before Tobin pulled the trigger, Rose screamed, startling Tobin into whirling around, and a split second later a shot rang out. Jake flinched, but it wasn't Tobin that had fired.

It was Dani, and Kenneth Tobin crumpled to the ground like a puppet who's strings were cut, a bullet right between his eyes. For a second, no one moved, or even seemed to breathe, and then Rose rushed forward to hug her old friend. As the team took a few seconds to reassure themselves that Jake wasn't hurt, the walkie-talkie on Tobin's belt suddenly crackled to life.

"Agent Tobin, sir. The Director's office is secure. Mission accomplished, target has been neutralized. I repeat, target neutralized."

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**Thanks for reading, and please review! Also, don't forget to vote in the poll. I'll leave it up until after this story is completed.**


	17. Chapter 17: As Bitter As Defeat

**This chapter was really difficult to write, and I would advise you all to be sure that you are aware of the location of the nearest tissue box. I'm sorry for doing this, please don't kill me. If you kill me, I can't write the rest of the series and explain why I had to do this.**

**Also, please remember to go vote for a sequel vs a prequel on my profile page. So far only two people have done so, and I'd really like to know what you all think.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Chapter Seventeen: As Bitter As Defeat

"_You may win this war, but when it is over, you will have lost so many lives that your victory will taste as bitter as defeat." –Paraphrased from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_

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Rose flinched and clutched little Sarah tighter as the honor guard began firing their weapons in tribute to her parents, and choked down yet another wave of tears. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying yet again that she would open them to find that this was all just a sick nightmare, because her parents couldn't possibly be dead. There had to be some sort of mistake. Perhaps she was still somehow trapped in Baxter's nightmare machine, or perhaps-

The Doctor's mental voice broke into her whirlwind thoughts, his tone incredibly soft and tender.

_"Oh, Rose, love, I am so sorry. I'd give almost anything to be able to tell you this wasn't real."_

_ "How did this happen?" _she cried mentally, unable to stop the tears from flowing down her face. _"Dad was supposed to have all of Torchwood protecting him! And Mum… she wasn't even supposed to be there! She was supposed to be safe in the TARDIS with the kids! What the hell was she doing there?"_

The Doctor closed his eyes and swallowed hard, his wife's grief battering his mental senses. No matter how many times they went over this, a part of Rose still refused to accept the reality of the situation. Not that he blamed her. Pete's death was tragic and cruel, particularly to the girl who had already had to watch her father die once, but Jackie's death was completely senseless, and for Rose to lose them both at the same time was merciless.

_"Pete's secretary said that she'd come in to visit him, and bring him something decent for lunch, since he hadn't been able to get away much lately. She'd only been in the building for about ten minutes before Terra Prime attacked," _he replied gently.

_"But we told her not to leave the TARDIS until we said it was safe! Why didn't she listen to us?"_

_ "Oh, Rose, you know your mother. I've never met a more stubborn, independent, opinionated woman in all of my nine hundred years. She did things her way, always did, no matter what anyone else said or did."_

Just then, Rose heard a smothered choking sound from her left, and turned to see her baby brother shaking, tears slipping out from beneath his sunglasses and barely managing to hold on to the folded flag in his hands, and Rose's heart broke again. As hard as this was on her, Tony was only seventeen. How was he supposed to cope with being brutally orphaned so young? He was supposed to be taking his A-levels in a few months, and he had high hopes of attending Cambridge Medical School in the fall. He had been toying with the notion of joining Torchwood's medical team instead of becoming a pediatrician like he'd been planning, but since their parents' death, the only mention he had made of the entire institution was to swear that he would never have anything to do with them again. Rose could hardly blame him. If Torchwood hadn't needed her and the Doctor so badly right now, she'd have been tempted to do the same.

Carefully transferring her youngest daughter from her left hip to her right, Rose wrapped her free arm around her baby brother, pulling him close. Tony ducked his head, and she heard him take in a deep, shuddering breath, and then he wrapped his arm around her waist, leaning down to rest his head on her shoulder for a moment. Since Tony was legally still a minor, Rose and the Doctor had taken on guardianship of him, and he'd moved into their home, flatly refusing to return to the mansion. Rose knew she'd have to force him to go back eventually, if only to pack, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to do so yet. Right now she couldn't even force herself to think about going there without breaking down, so how could she ask Tony to do so?

Rose felt Mick tugging on their link, and glanced to her right to see her husband holding their to older children as close as he could, an arm around each of their shoulders. She could distantly feel that he had opened his mind and was telepathically trying to comfort their children, but it didn't seem to be enough for Mick, and he had reached out to her as well. Rose opened her mind to her son, grateful that she could comfort him like this even though her hands were full with Tony and Sarah. A moment later, she felt Emma reaching out as well, and soon all five telepathic members of the family were sharing each other's minds, supporting and strengthening each other. They all felt Emma's pang of regret that they couldn't do the same for Tony, and the Doctor gave her a faint smile before giving Rose a slight telepathic nudge. Rose lifted her hand to Tony's temple, and his head shot up off her shoulder to look at her. She managed a tremulous smile, and that seemed to be enough for Tony, as he nodded and closed his eyes. With gentle mental fingers, Rose pulled her brother into the family link, and smiled faintly at the wave of awe she felt from him. It took a great deal of effort to link Tony in like this, but it was definitely worth it.

When the funeral was over, they reluctantly retreated back into their own minds and headed back to the limousine that Vitex had provided, parked just at the edge of the cemetery. Before they reached it, however, an unscrupulous paparazzo leapt in front of them and began snapping photos of the grieving family. The Torchwood agents on protective detail didn't even have time to react before Tony lunged forward and snatched the camera out of the man's hand, throwing it to the ground and punching the man in the jaw, all without letting go of the precious flag.

"Tony!" the Doctor called out, trying to get his attention, but the teenager ignored him completely.

"Why the hell can't you people leave us alone?" Tony yelled at the hapless photographer, who was lying on the ground clutching his jaw and wearing a very bewildered expression. Tony's fists were clenched, his voice cracked, and he was shaking again. "My parents are dead, and all you bastards care about is snapping photos and butting into our lives!"

He started to say more, but the Doctor placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and turned him gently, meeting his eyes.

"Come on, Tony, he's not worth it," the Doctor said softly. Tony stared at him for a moment, then jerked out of the Doctor's hold and stormed off to the car, his free hand still clenched into a fist and his shoulders shaking. The Doctor made a small gesture to Rose, and she led Mick and Emma along in Tony's wake, still carrying Sarah.

The Doctor gave the paparazzo a look that would have frozen the sun, and spoke one sentence in a quiet, deadly tone. "Leave now, and stop trying to intrude on my family's grief."

Without waiting to see the man's reaction, he simply turned on his heel and followed after his family.

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Late that evening, Rose and the Doctor finally got their children settled in bed, and chased Tony into the guest room, telling him he needed to get some rest. They held tightly to each other's hands as they made their way down the hall to their own room, and once they'd shut the door behind them, the Doctor pulled Rose into his arms, holding her tightly and opening their bond as far as it would go. He had no words with which to comfort her, so he just sent her all of the love and support in his heart. As vulnerable as she was, the strength of his emotions caused her to lose her tenuous grip on control, and she began to cry helplessly into his shoulder. He gently led her to their bed and helped her sit down, then held her close, his lips against her hair, until she wore herself out. Without saying a word, he brought her a glass of water and handed her a tissue, and then lovingly helped her into her most comfortable jimjams and settled her into bed. Rose watched as he moved gracefully around the room, putting her clothes in the laundry basket and changing into his own nightclothes, and she was forcefully reminded of just how much she loved this man, and how incredibly lucky she was to have him with her. When he turned off the light and slipped in beside her, wrapping his arms around her again, she lifted her head to meet his lips, kissing him lightly.

"God, I love you," she rasped out, her voice harsh from crying. "Don't ever leave me, my Doctor, I don't know what I'd do without you."

"Never," he vowed softly, kissing her forehead tenderly. "You'll never have to find out." He shifted slightly, and pillowed her head on his chest, cradling her protectively in his arms. The long day and longer weeks caught up to him quickly, though, and he was soon asleep.

Exhausted as she was, however, Rose couldn't get to sleep. As she often had the past several days, she found her mind returning to the events of the Battle of Torchwood, reliving every detail, her mind refusing to stop torturing her.

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_Flashback_

_ Rose stared at the walkie in stunned disbelief. "What does he mean, target neutralized? He can't mean… it can't be… No!" She yelled, and broke away from the Doctor's hand, racing for the stairwell and taking the stairs three at a time, like she hadn't done for years. She dimly registered that there were people racing after her, and her marriage bond told her that the Doctor was one of them, but she couldn't acknowledge them, couldn't think, couldn't slow down. Her heart pounded in her chest as she ran, harder and harder as if it would force its way out, and the only thought in her head was that she had to get to her father's office, because there was no way he could be dead._

_ She burst out of the stairwell onto the top floor and rounded the corner at top speed, and was greeted by a sight that she knew would be burned into her mind for the rest of her life, the stuff of nightmares._

_ The lever room looked like a battleground from a war documentary, with dead from both sides scattered all around. There were countless bullet holes and laser burns in the walls, evidence of both human weaponry and of weapons taken from various alien invaders, and all of the technical equipment in the room was smashed beyond all recognition. Rose stopped dead in her tracks, letting out an involuntary cry of horror at the terrible sight. A second later, she felt the Doctor's arms sliding around her waist, and his own horror echoing back to her._

_ Her cry must have attracted someone's attention, as no sooner had the Doctor wrapped his arms around her than the scorched door to the Director's office swung open and half a dozen battered, weary men poured out, each wearing the Terra Prime uniform. Without hesitation, they raised their weapons and took aim, and the one who seemed to be in charge began to speak._

_ "Drop your weapons, Torchwood, it's over. Your precious Director is dead, and you've lost." _

_ Rose gasped, and the Doctor tucked her behind him, shielding her with his body. She felt his mind churning, trying as always to talk his way out of a fight, but before he could speak a single word, they heard a furious, inhuman growl from off to the side, and Agent Rollins, one of the younger agents that had followed them upstairs cried out, "You're going to pay for this!" raised his automatic rifle, and opened fire._

_ No one on either side had time to react, and the Torchwood agent were forced to watch as all six of the Terra Prime soldiers were gunned down in an instant. When Rollins stopped firing, Jake broke from his paralysis first and strode over to the kid, jerking the weapon out of his hands._

_"What the hell did you do that for?" Jake snapped, long since past caring about rank, protocol, or appropriate disciplinary measures. _

_ Rollins, in turn, was borderline hysterical. "You heard them, sir! They murdered Director Tyler!"_

_ "And you felt the way to handle it was to kill them on the spot? This is not how Torchwood operates! If we go around killing everyone who gives us half a reason, then what the hell makes us better than Terra Prime?" _

_ "Jake…" Rose said softly, getting her old friend's attention. "Now's not the time. Court martial him later, right now we've got to find out-" she stopped and choked, then managed to force out the rest of that sentence. "We have to find out if they were telling the truth." She squared her shoulders, and strode through the room as quickly as she could, making for her father's office. She nearly balked at the sight of the shattered glass windows and burned doorframe, but forced herself to go inside._

_ Just inside the doorway, the bodies of at least half a dozen Torchwood agents lay crumpled, including Agent Summers, who had been one of Rose's most promising students. Her vision began to blur with tears, and blinked rapidly, forcing herself not to break down. She had to find her father, had to know the truth. Slowly, she lifted her eyes from the lifeless bodies of the Agents who had given their lives to help defend Torchwood, and looked around the room._

_ There, lying in front of his desk, was Peter Alan Tyler, Director of Torchwood, President and CEO of Vitex, beloved father, clearly dead. With an agonized cry, Rose rushed forward and dropped to her knees beside him, pulling his head into her lap, crying helplessly and begging for a miracle. But the bullet wounds did not heal, he did not gasp and open his eyes, his heart did not start beating again. He was gone._

_ How long she crouched there, holding on to her father's body, she had no idea. Dimly, she registered that her beloved Doctor had taken charge, ushering people out, giving instructions, and trying to give her some privacy, while at the same time offering his love and support through their bond. A tiny part of her mind held on to that, clinging desperately to him as though his support was the only thing keeping her sane. Perhaps it was. Finally, the Doctor crouched beside her, gently wrapping his arms around her. He cradled her lovingly in his arms, his lips against her hair, and Rose lost track of the passage of time again._

_ "Rose," the Doctor said gently, bringing her out of the fog. "Rose, love, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so, sorry, but I have to ask you to do something. You're the only person who knew where Pete kept the emergency code systems, and how to get access to them. Can you get them? Or would you rather I accessed your mind and got them myself?"_

_ Rose swallowed, and quickly squashed the brief flare of resentment she felt at the request. This was her Doctor, and she knew he wouldn't be asking her this now if he had a choice. Given the situation, it made sense that they would need the emergency codes, and it wasn't as though anyone else could get them. Shakily, she nodded, and said softly, "I'll get them, just –Doctor?"_

_ "Yes, love?"_

_ "Don't let go of me," she managed, clutching his hands tightly._

_ "Never," he assured her, and gently helped her to her feet. He stood behind her, holding on to her hands so that she was still partly cradled in his arms, and she slowly led him around to the other side of Pete's desk. She locked her eyes onto it, refusing to see anything else, and knelt beside it before crawling underneath. She lifted the patch of loose carpet, exposing the lockbox the Doctor had gotten Pete from the fifty-second century for exactly this purpose, and punched in the code, which was the date of Pete's second wedding to Jackie, a date that no one outside the family knew except Jake. Well, and Mickey, but he could hardly tell anyone from another universe. _

_ The box popped open, and she pulled out the little flash drive and crawled out from under the desk. She handed it to the Doctor without a word, and shuffled off to the side so that he could get to Pete's computer. Her eyes drifted away from the computer and flitted around the office, noting the framed copy of the treaty with the Korellians, the endless photos of Jackie, Tony, Rose herself, the Doctor, Emma, Mick, and Sarah. Far from the cold, lonely man that Pete had been when they first met him, Pete had become a family man, surrounded by love and laughter. Rose's vision blurred again, and she looked away from the photos, the evidence of her father's joy in his life too much for her right now. As she looked away, she caught sight of something else in the corner, behind the overstuffed armchair that Pete had always kept there. _

_ It was another body, dressed in civilian clothes, with bottle-blonde hair. _

_ Instantly, it was as though all the air was sucked out of Rose's lungs, and what little color was left in her face fled, leaving her as white as a ghost. It couldn't be…_

_ The Doctor was at her side in an instant, abandoning whatever he'd been doing on the computer. "What is it, Rose? What happened?" _

_ Unable to speak, she lifted one shaky hand and pointed. The Doctor followed her finger, and she felt it the moment he saw what she'd seen. He stiffened, and a wave a shock spilled from his mind, and he darted forward, throwing the armchair out of his way with a strength she'd almost forgotten he had. He knelt next to the woman's body and gently turned her over, whispering "Jackie, no, it can't be." _

_ An errant thought flashed through Rose's mind as it occurred to her that her mother and her Doctor really had managed to see each other as family after all this time. _

_ A split second later, all thoughts blanked out of her mind as the woman's face came into view. _

_ Jackie Tyler._

_ Rose didn't even notice when her Doctor caught her as she collapsed._

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Panic. Grief. Guilt. The emotions whirled in the Doctor's unconscious mind, twisting into his own emotions and dragging his sleeping mind back to full awareness. He blinked rapidly, shakily his head slightly, and turned to see his wife caught in a nightmare. That woke him up the rest of the way, and he sat up, gently shaking her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Rose, wake up, love. You're having a nightmare."

Her eyes shot open at the sound of his voice, confirming his suspicions that she wasn't deeply asleep, and let out a tiny whimper before burying her head in his chest. He held her close, stroking her hair as she slowly calmed down again. When he felt like she could carry on a coherent conversation, he spoke.

"Rose, why didn't you tell me you were having trouble sleeping?"

Rose shifted around a bit, not meeting his eyes. "I didn't want to worry you."

He sighed. "I'm worried about you anyway, love, not much more harm it could have done. Plus, there's more, I can tell."

She lifted her head and conceded the point. "All this time, ever since I got you back, I've never once had nightmares when we were sleeping together, up until now. I guess I just didn't want you to feel… I don't know," she mumbled, and looked away, embarrassed.

He smiled faintly. "Sweet of you, Rose, but not necessary. I know you haven't been through anything that even remotely this traumatizing since we were married, so there hasn't been as much for you to have nightmares about. I'm not offended, if that's what you were worried about. Plus, you have had nightmares. Remember that one about the dancing giraffe?" he asked, trying to lighten the mood, even just a fraction.

Rose echoed his faint smile, and he mentally congratulated himself, as it was one of only a handful that he'd coaxed out of her since the battle. "Come on, love. Let me help you sleep. We have a big day tomorrow, big important Torchwood meeting, and you need your rest." He lightly placed his fingertips on her temples and waited for her assent.

"You can do that?" Rose asked, a bit incredulous. He gave her a look that said 'of course I can, how dare you question my magnificent Timelord abilities?' and she actually giggled. Just a tiny bit, but it was still a giggle, and the Doctor smiled gently.

"Yes, I can," he said simply. She nodded her assent, and felt the Doctor's soothing presence fill her mind, coaxing her down into a much needed sleep.

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The next morning, the bedraggled remains of Torchwood's ranking agents were convened around a table in the tertiary conference room, which was the only one of the four that was still somewhat serviceable after the attack. By unspoken agreement, no one was sitting at the head of the table, leaving the chair that would have been Pete's empty. Rose and the Doctor were seated next to each other near the end, with Jake on Rose's other side. Rose gazed around the table and tried not to think about the faces that were missing, choosing instead to focus on the ones that were there.

Across from her was Amanda Jordan, head of Torchwood Three. She was a bit beat up, and had one arm in a sling, but she had insisted on attending the meeting despite her injuries. Also present were Dr. Joel Watson, head of the medical staff, Agent Chandra Singh, from the diplomatic corps, and Agent Linda Bates, who was the second-in-command of Torchwood Two in Glasgow, and looked a bit like she had no idea how she'd gotten here. Her boss, Agent McCoy, had been killed, and so Linda was now head of Torchwood Two by default, unless she refused the job, or the new Director decided to place someone else there.

"Right, I think we're all here, so I'm calling this meeting to order," Jake said suddenly, breaking into Rose's thoughts. "First thing is this: about five minutes ago, I heard from Agents Hopkins and Grant. Their team caught up with the last remaining Terra Prime leaders outside Cairo, including Derek Baxter and Senator Hartman, and they've taken them into custody. They're being brought back to London to stand trial on charges of mass murder, terrorism, and in Baxter's case, one of the suits down in Legal thinks he can convince the UN to put him on trial for war crimes, for the way he tortured people and experimented on them, like they would have done with Lumic if he hadn't died."

It was a mark of how exhausted and emotionally battered they all were that Jake's words were met with only a quiet acknowledgement, and not the cheers that might have been expected from the same people a month ago. While they were all glad to hear it, they simply could not summon the energy to show it.

Jake gave them all a moment to digest that bit of news, and then moved on to the next piece of business. "Next thing is this. We need to present a new Director to the world, soon as possible, or Torchwood is going to appear weak and vulnerable. I don't think I need to remind you all that we can't afford that, so I'm going to open the floor for suggestions."

He sat back in his chair and looked around the room, waiting for someone to speak. He didn't have to wait long.

"Agent Tyler," Dr. Watson stated firmly. "Or Doctor Tyler, or, you know, both. There's no one better suited for the job than the two of you."

Rose felt as though a lead weight had dropped into her stomach, and by the look on the Doctor's face, he felt much the same. All eyes turned toward them, and they all had expectant, hopeful looks in their eyes. Clearly, Joel's suggestion was rather popular.

"No," the Doctor said firmly. "Just- No."

Joel looked rather taken aback. "Why not? You've got the experience, the ability, the reputation, and you're pretty well-nigh unstoppable as a team."

For once, the Doctor seemed at a loss for words, and so Rose spoke up instead. "After what happened to my parents, there's no way we could ever think of taking over that office," she said, softly but clearly. "If Dad had retired and wanted to hand the reins over to us, then I might have considered it, though I'm not still not sure I would have wanted the job. As it is, though… I'm sorry, I can't."

The Doctor cleared his throat and got his gob working again. "That goes for me as well. There are also other reasons, practical ones, why this would be a bad idea. First, it makes Torchwood look like a family business, and that's not a good image for a quasi-military operation. Second, appointing both of us would make it look like Director Tyler was so irreplaceable that we have to send two people to do the job he used to do. Fourth, no, wait, third, I think I can safely say that Rose and I are certainly emotionally compromised. Fourth, it would be good for Torchwood to have a Director who wasn't tabloid fodder."

The room fell silent as they took in the Doctor's words, and Rose could see as each of them were convinced by his reasoning. She let out a sigh of relief. Being a part of Torchwood at all was hard for her right now, but there was no way she could ever run it.

"Alright, James, that's a fair point. So, who then?" Agent Singh spoke up quietly.

"Jake," Rose suggested softly. "He's been head of field operations for fifteen years, and he's one of the founding members of the version of Torchwood we've all tried to protect. Appointing him says that we have longevity, strength, that we hold to our convictions, and that we don't practice favoritism. Plus, I don't think there's anyone who'd be a better choice."

Jake spluttered. "Rose, are you mad? My place is with Ops, getting my hands dirty and getting things done, not sitting in meetings and playing politics with the Senate."

"And maybe that's exactly what we need right now, a show of strength. Telling the whole world that we won't put up with anyone's crap," Amanda put in, tossing her long hair over her shoulder and wincing slightly as the movement jarred one of her injuries.

"Who'd take over field ops?" Jake asked, and Rose knew they had him. Any other protests or spluttering was just Jake's surprise, or for show. Deep down, her old friend knew he was the best person to take over.

"You know as well as I that you've got half a dozen agents in your department who'd be very well placed to take over. Hopkins, Grant, Bellisario, and Lloyd, just to name a few. Any of them could do the job, and do it well. You've been quietly training all four of those to be able to take your place for years, so don't pretend you don't know how capable they are," the Doctor pointed out, and Jake squirmed.

"Yes, but I –" he stopped, swallowed, and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, it was in a much calmer voice. "You're right. If we aren't appointing the Tylers here, then I think it's my duty to step in."

"Good man, Jake," the Doctor said warmly, and Rose spared a moment to think about the angry, impetuous, impulsive young man they'd met the very first time they'd been in this universe. How far he'd come. How far they had all come.

"If no one has any objections…" Jake trailed off, looking around the room and meeting everyone's eyes in turn. No one spoke, and many of them gave Jake approving nods. He sighed. "Very well then. I guess we can call that settled. We'll send a press release out in the morning."

The remainder of the meeting passed fairly quickly, and in much the same manner. They discussed which Agents would be best suited to fill the vacant positions as head of Field Ops, Torchwood Two, Xenolinguistics, and all of the other positions that had been left empty. At the Doctor's request (though demand might have been more accurate), the Weapons Development department was abolished, and the research being conducted there would be brought into R&D, where the Doctor could keep an eye on it. Most of its agents had either been Terra Prime traitors or killed, so there wasn't much of a department left anyway. They also discussed damage reports, the status of the repairs, and the final casualty reports, which had informed them that almost forty percent of Torchwood One had been killed in the attack, with another thirty-five percent wounded.

The losses were staggering, and as the meeting adjourned and she walked out, hand in hand with the Doctor, Rose found herself wondering if Torchwood could ever really recover from this. They had supposedly won the battle, but it didn't feel like much of a victory. She doubted that it ever would.

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**Thank you for reading, and please review.**


	18. Epilogue: Five Years Gone

**I now present the final chapter in this, the first installment of my Doctor Who series. I'll save my Author's note for the end. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, would I be writing fan fiction?**

Epilogue: Five Years Gone

Rose winced in sympathy as the young skater missed her jump and fell heavily to the ice. The girl clearly wasn't injured, as she quickly got back to her feet and back into her routine, but after watching Emma skate for so long, Rose knew that a fall like that would likely cost the girl the competition.

_"Mum, I'm bored. When's Emma coming on?" _Sarah asked (well, whined might have been a better term).

Rose fought down a smile as she replied to her seven-year-old. _"Soon, love. Once this girl's finished, there are two more skaters, and then your sister."_

_ "And then can we go? I hate ice skating," _Sarah grumbled.

_"You're just saying that because you can't even make it around the rink once without falling on your-"_

_ "Michael Alan Tyler! What have we told you about eavesdropping on other people's private telepathic conversations?" _Rose scolded him, turning her glare on her son.

Mick looked a bit ashamed of himself. _"Sorry, Mum,"_ he said, his mental voice contrite.

_"Apologize to your sister, Mick," _the Doctor put in.

"_Sorry, sis. Hey, how come Dad gets to listen in?" _Mick suddenly whirled to glare at his father, who smirked.

_"I wasn't, your mother was the only one of you who was bothering to shield, and you were broadcasting that conversation for any telepath within a hundred-meter radius to hear. Clearly, we need to work on your shields again, you two." _The Doctor gave them both a stern look, and this time, there was genuine embarrassment from both of the kids, and they fell silent. Rose and the Doctor shared a look of half amusement, half exasperation, a look that they had practiced to perfection over the past sixteen years of being parents. There was always something.

As the girl down on the ice finished her routine, someone spoke up from behind them.

"Hey, am I late?"

"Uncle Tony!" Sarah scrambled out of her chair and bounded over to say hello, while Mick's mind lit up with just as much excitement, but, at twelve years old, he was much too cool to run for hugs from his uncle.

"Hey, squirt," Tony said, picking his niece up with ease and tickling her. She shrieked with laughter and squirmed out of his arms, taking Tony's hand and dragging him to sit by her. He reached over and ruffled Mick's hair, much to the boy's annoyance.

"Aw, come on, Tony, knock it off," Mick complained as he ducked away and fixed his hair with a scowl. He looked so much like his father right then that Rose chuckled to herself.

"To answer your question, Tony, you missed the short program this morning, but she hasn't gone yet with the long. Thank you for coming down, it'll mean so much to Emma that you're here," she said, fixing her brother with a warm look.

"'Course," Tony said, shrugging. "Term's over now, so I wasn't about to miss her biggest competition ever. I, ah, meant to be here for the morning, but I overslept. How'd the short go?"

"She was spectacular," the Doctor said proudly. "Absolutely spectacular. She easily placed first for the short, with a huge margin."

Tony whistled appreciatively. "That's our Emma for you. Never gives anyone else a chance. How's she feeling, is she nervous?" he asked, knowing that the Doctor would be able to tell, given their telepathic bond.

However, it was Mick who answered him. "She's okay, but I think she's getting mad at someone. Hey, it's leaking through her shields, I'm not eavesdropping," he added hastily when his parents glared at him.

Rose nodded in satisfaction and turned to the Doctor. "Should I check on her? Or should I just leave her alone, let her concentrate?"

The Doctor thought for a moment, then nodded at her. "Go ahead and check on her. Mick's right, she's getting irritated, and that's not good for her focus."

Rose turned her attention inward, then reached for her oldest child. _"How are you feeling, sweetheart?" _she asked.

She felt the mental equivalent of a sigh. _"I'm fine, I just want to skate."_

Rose sent back a snort. _"Then why is your irritation so strong that it's leaking through your shields?"_

_ "Sorry, Mum." _Rose felt a brief pause as Emma reinforced her mental shielding. _"Is that better?"_

_ "Just tell me what's annoying you so much."_

There was a long, pregnant pause. _"It's Carlson," _Emma replied at last, referring to her skating coach. _"He's pestering me again. I keep telling him I'm not going for the Olympics, but he won't let it go. I just wish I could tell him why, that I'm an alien –well, part alien, anyway- and I can't take all the steroid tests without exposing all of us. No, wait, scratch that, I just want to be able to tell him yes."_

_ "I'm sorry, Emma. I know that you-"_

_ "Hey, it's not your fault these stupid little apes aren't ready to deal with us yet. It's like Dad keeps saying, I'll just have to borrow the TARDIS and skate in the Inter-Galactic Olympics in a few centuries. Plus, then there might be someone who can actually give me a run for my money,"_ Emma said, her voice full of amusement. _"Gotta go, Mum, there's only one more girl before me, and Carlson's lecturing me about 'going into the bubble.'"_

_ "Good luck, sweetheart. I know you'll be amazing. Just don't get cocky," _Rose warned.

_"Hey, humble is my middle name."_

With that, Emma broke contact, and Rose sat back in her seat. "Well, she's not nervous," she informed her family. "Just annoyed at her coach for pestering her again."

"Isn't it her coach's job to pester her?" Tony asked with a smirk.

"No, it's his job to coach her on her skating. What he's been doing is pestering her about the trials to qualify for the Olympics."

At Rose's words, they all fell silent, and completely missed the next skater beginning her performance. They all knew why Emma couldn't compete, but they also all knew that it was a crime and a shame for someone with Emma's talent to be denied that opportunity. The silence was broken by Mick suddenly piping up.

"I'm hungry, and I think I just barely have time to go get a snack before Emma's on." He bounced out of his seat before Rose or the Doctor had time to react, and headed off.

"I'll go with him," Tony said a second later, shaking his head. "He probably forgot that he doesn't have any money in his pockets or something."

Rose chuckled, and watched her brother chase after her son with a smile on her face, thinking that Tony was probably right. Mick was legendary for having a bad case of what Emma referred to as "absent-minded professor syndrome," something he had definitely gotten from his father. (All these years of human life, and Rose was still having to remind her husband to take his phone and wallet with him when he left the house. He never forgot his sonic, though.) Watching Tony looking after Mick, she was struck with a wave of pride in her little brother, tempered (as it often was) by a touch of melancholy.

_Oh, Mum, you'd be so proud of him, _she thought wistfully. Tony was exactly the sort of son every mother wished she had. Bright, clever, compassionate, a true gentleman, responsible… the list went on, and Rose wished so much that her parents could see him now. He'd just finished his fourth year at Cambridge, where he was studying to become a doctor, a "proper doctor," as he had often joked, just to tease his brother-in-law. He was excelling at university, and his professors were very impressed with him, as he far outshone most of his peers. The one thing that made Rose worry about him was that he never seemed to get close to anyone, or make any friends. When she asked him about it, he had simply laughed it off, saying that he just didn't connect with anyone, and she needed to stop worrying about him.

That wasn't something she could do, however. Their parents' deaths had really hit him hard, harder than he even seemed to realize. He used to be so sociable, making friends as easily as breathing, and now… Now it seemed like he didn't want to let anyone get close to him. He pushed everyone away, except for their family, and Rose just wished he could have friends again like he used to.

Pete and Jackie's deaths had been hard on the entire family, though, not just Tony, and especially on Rose. Trying to mourn her parents while rebuilding Torchwood had been the next thing to impossible, and Rose had no idea how she would have ever managed to get through that first year without her Doctor. She still missed them terribly, and there wasn't a day that went by that she didn't think of them, but she'd learned to move on, and take joy in her life and her family again.

Torchwood's recovery had been just as long and difficult, but now, five years later, they were finally operating at peak efficiency again. Appointing Jake as Director had turned out to be one of the smartest moves they could ever have made, and he'd slipped into the job as though he'd been born for it. Torchwood's reputation had been built back up as well, and even extended beyond the solar system. Peaceful aliens from all over the quadrant were opening talks with Torchwood, and on the two-year anniversary of the Battle of Torchwood, Torchwood had negotiated a ground-breaking peace treaty between Earth and the planet Beldrox. It was an amazing time to be alive, watching the planet of her birth taking its first few baby steps into the larger universe.

Tony and Mick came back a moment later, chattering about Mick's school and his friends, and Rose smiled. Her son was as devastatingly charming as his father at his best, and Mick barely seemed to know how to turn it off. Where most twelve year old boys went through a depressingly awkward phase, Mick was anything but awkward. He was instantly liked by nearly everyone he met, from his classmates to his teachers, for his quick wit and adorable smile. It was also very plain that he had inherited his father's devastating good looks, and the girls in his classes were already sighing over him, which did not help Rose to sleep at night. He still bounced off the walls like a five year old on Red Bull, and dismantled anything and everything he could get his hands on. In the last two years Mick had ruined more toasters than the Doctor had in all the previous years of their marriage, which was saying quite a lot. It had almost gotten to the point where Rose had given up on having a working toaster in the house at all.

Rose smirked to herself as Sarah began stealing small handfuls of her brother's popcorn when his back was turned, then gave her daughter a pointed look. She got the hint immediately and flushed, then tugged lightly on Mick's sleeve to ask if he'd share with her. Permission granted, she went right back to eating her brother's snack with a happy little smile.

Sarah was one of the most adorable children Rose had ever seen in her entire life, and that wasn't just her own motherly bias talking. Nearly everyone who met her made a comment about how beautiful she was, and how she was going to be a heartbreaker someday. She was blonde, and looked a lot like Rose herself had as a child, except with every feature refined and perfected. She was very sweet and friendly, though a bit quiet and shy around strangers and outsiders, but around their family, she was every bit as hyper as Mick on a sugar rush. Sarah was also an incredibly caring child, always taking it upon herself to look after her friends and classmates, and the only time she displayed a temper was when she was standing up to bullies, usually on behalf of someone else.

Recently, Sarah had started taking gymnastics lessons (much to the Doctor's amusement), and she was definitely enjoying it. She also had something of a gift for music, a talent she shared with Emma, and the two sisters had a great deal of fun singing together when Emma wasn't busy on the ice.

As for Emma, well, she was every bit as remarkable as her younger siblings. Aside from being a brilliant skater, she was a skilled musician as well, and, just like Mick and Sarah, her Gallifreyan mind allowed her to absorb all academic subjects in school like a sponge. She'd passed her TARDIS driving test over a year ago (though she still wasn't allowed to take her anywhere by herself) and had, at the age of twelve, surprised both her parents by showing them the sonic pen that she'd built for herself. There were times, many times, when Rose wondered if there was anything that didn't come as naturally to Emma as breathing did to humans.

The downside of Emma's very visible genius (coupled with the notoriety attached to the name Tyler) was that she had a great deal of difficulty connecting with any of her peers. Whatever it was that Mick and Sarah both had that made it so easy for them to make friends seemed to have skipped Emma entirely. While she was well liked, she didn't really have any close friends, and essentially had no one her age to relate to. The Doctor was especially perturbed by their daughter's isolation, as it reminded him pointedly of his own lonely childhood on Gallifrey, and both he and Rose worried a great deal about their daughter, but there wasn't much they could do about it. And, truth to tell, Emma rarely seemed to be that bothered by it.

Rose was startled out of her introspection by the sound of thunderous applause from the audience, and realized that the last skater must have finished her routine. She applauded politely, and the Tylers waited (some a bit impatiently) while the girl's scores were announced. She'd done moderately well, but Rose knew that she simply wasn't in Emma's league. A slightly tense, anticipation-filled moment later, and the announcer was finally introducing her.

"Our next skater is sixteen-year-old Emma Tyler-"

"Finally," Sarah hissed slightly, making Rose miss the rest of the introduction, and she sighed and shook her head. Despite all the things that Emma and Sarah had in common, the one thing that the girls did not agree on was figure skating. While it was Emma's passion, Sarah loathed it, and none of them were really sure why. Sarah was only willing to put up with it if she was watching her big sister skate, and even then, it was only grudgingly.

As Rose shook her head at her youngest, Emma glided gracefully out onto the ice, to enthusiastic applause from the crowd. In the past couple of years, Emma had made quite a name for herself, and the spectators recognized that she was definitely one of the ones to watch. Emma came to a gentle stop in the center of the rink, the rhinestone sparkles on her deep blue costume glinting in the light. Although she couldn't see it from here, Rose knew that the circular design on the back of Emma's costume was actually Gallifreyan writing, the words for "storm" and "young wolf" overlaid on top of each other. It was intended to mean "Stormcub," as Tony's nickname for Emma had continued to stick, even after all these years.

There was a brief pause, in which Rose scanned her daughters emotions through the link, and found her to be cool, calm, and ready to skate, not a trace of nervousness in her. She was confidence personified. Then the music began to play through the sound system, and Emma began to skate.

From the very first movements she made, it was obvious that Emma was in a league of her own compared to the other girls in the competition. There was no shakiness or jerkiness to her movements, every move was part of the one before it, and she moved with a grace and fluidity that Rose was never able to describe. She executed her first jump flawlessly, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd, who were clearly falling more and more in love with her with every move she made. As her routine went on, the technical difficulty of her choreography steadily increased, until the music reached its passionate climax and Emma stunned the crowd (and likely the judges) by executing four spinning leaps in a row, with barely enough time between them for her skates to touch the ice.

As Emma struck her final pose and the crowd roared to its feet, Rose thought her heart would burst with pride in her amazing daughter. She turned and met the Doctor's gaze, feeling the same swell of emotion from her husband, and was unsurprised to see a hint of moisture in his gorgeous brown eyes.

_"That's our little girl," _she sent to him, beaming happily.

_"Yeah," _he replied, even his mental voice choked up with emotion. _"She was just-"_

_ "Fantastic?" _Rose suggested, grinning at him with her tongue in her teeth.

He grinned back at her, making her favorite little happy noise deep in his throat. _"Well, I was going to say brilliant, but yeah. Fantastic."_

0-0-0-0-0

Emma bowed elegantly to the cheering crowd, grinning in triumph and savoring the rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Even if it turned out not to be enough for her to take first place, she wouldn't trade the last four minutes for anything, and she knew she'd savor this performance for the rest of her life. She felt like she'd never skated better in her life, and the high she was riding made her feel like she was on top of the world. She could feel her parents' and siblings' pride and congratulations echoing across the family bonds, and thanked them with a little mental salute.

When the crowd finally settled down enough to let her leave, she glided off the ice to meet her coach and wait for her scores. Carlson met her right at the edge with a congratulatory hug and her favorite blue zip-up hoodie, which had her trademark "Stormcub" emblem in silver on the back. She slipped the hoodie on with a nod of thanks, and let Carlson guide her over to a bench to sit down.

"You did amazing, kid. You brought the house down, and there's no way anyone's going to be able to top that," Carlson told her once she was sitting.

"Oh, you mean you're not going to bust me for wobbling the landing on that second-to-last jump?" Emma asked, grinning up at her coach.

He chuckled. "Of course I am. Tomorrow," he replied, handing her a bottle of water. "Drink this, and sit tight for a minute or two. I have to run and check on something, but I'll be back before they post your scores. You okay with that, or do you want me to wait with you?"

She accepted the water gratefully, but shook her head at his offer. "Nah, go ahead. I'm fine."

"Okay then, I'll see you in a minute. And Emma?"

"Yeah?"

"You really were terrific out there, and I honestly think you've got this in the bag."

Emma smiled, and ducked her head a little. "Thanks, Coach."

He grinned at her again, and hurried off, leaving Emma to relive the memory of her performance and drink her water. She had messed up that one landing near the end, and after she'd basked in the glow of her successful performance for a while, she found herself going over that error with a fine-toothed comb, trying to pinpoint the exact moment that she had gone wrong. She decided that the angle of the jump had been the problem, rather than the landing, and was just running through the physics calculations in her head when Carlson returned and interrupted her.

"They're about to post the scores, you ready?" he asked without preamble.

"Yep," she replied, popping the "p" and getting to her feet to see the board better. They waited for a minute, both holding their breath, and then her scores flashed up on the board.

Emma stared for a moment, stunned. She'd just broken the all-time score record for her entire age division. "Yes!" she exclaimed, jumping up and punching the air in her excitement. With a score like that, the announcement of first place was just a formality, as it would be essentially impossible to top what she'd just done.

And no one could say that she'd gotten this any way other than by earning it herself, or say that "oh, it's just because she's a Tyler," or compare her to her parents in any way. This was something that was hers and hers alone, that she excelled at. As much as she adored her parents, and as proud as she was to be their daughter, it was sometimes hard for her to be constantly stuck in their shadow, trying to live up to the family name. Here, on the ice, none of that mattered, and she could make her own name. And no one could take that away from her.

0-0-0-0-0

After the award ceremony, Emma waited patiently for her family to wade through the crowd to meet up with her, her shiny new gold medal hanging around her neck, and her skates and costume in a duffel bag over her shoulder. She'd changed into her street clothes (jeans, a black T-shirt with a stick-figure cartoon of a mad scientist captioned "Stand back, I'm going to try Science!" in white lettering, her beloved hoodie, and matching blue chucks) had pulled her brown hair out of the ridiculously tight bun it had been in, instead letting it hang loose over her shoulders. Her sonic pen was back in the pocket of her jeans where it belonged, and she couldn't help but relax a bit at that. Ever since she'd made the thing, she'd really hated going anywhere without it.

She felt her family's telepathic signatures before she saw them, and pushed herself off the wall to greet them, putting her bag down on the ground. After all, she knew she was going to need both arms, and sure enough, no sooner had she put the bag down, then her sister Sarah bounded around the corner and jumped up into her arms. Emma caught her sister with a faint grunt of effort and swung her around, grinning at her sister's mostly nonsensical babble.

"So, I take it you liked the show then?" she asked with a smirk as she put her sister down again.

Sarah huffed. "Well, I liked your part, I guess, you were really good."

Emma cocked one eyebrow at Sarah in surprise. "Did you just compliment my figure skating, kitten? Are you sick, or is it the first of the signs of the apocalypse?"

"Emmaaaa," Sarah whined huffily, apparently annoyed by her teasing. She quickly changed the subject. "Daddy says we get to go on a celebratory trip in the TARDIS, and I want to go to-"

Emma quickly switched to telepathy and interrupted her sister. _"Hush, kitten, you know better than to talk about the TARDIS out loud in public. Now, you were saying?"_

_ "I want to go to Disney World, the planet, not the theme park in Georgia. Did you know that in the other universe, Disney World was in Florida? Daddy told me."_

Emma chuckled in amusement. _"Yes, actually, I did know. And don't you think I should get to pick the destination for this particular celebratory trip?"_

Sarah sighed theatrically. _"Yes, but I was hoping you'd pick Disney World if I asked you to."_

_ "Of course you were." _Just then, Emma glanced up and spotted the rest of the family coming towards them, including-

"Tony! You came!" she exclaimed, delighted to see him.

"Course I did, Stormcub. And seriously, you were amazing out there," Tony complimented her, and wrapped her in a big hug as soon as he got close enough.

"Thanks," she said, beaming. When Tony broke away, she got congratulatory hugs from her parents and Mick, and very proud mental waves from her parents. As her father's arms wrapped around her, Emma felt his pride in her echoing stronger and more clearly across the link, and she snuggled happily into his arms. Maybe it was just a holdover from her childhood, but there was nowhere in the universe where she ever felt safer, more secure, or more loved than in her Daddy's arms.

_"You were brilliant, Emma," _her father murmured into her mind, and she grinned happily.

_"Thanks, Dad," _she replied simply, letting her emotions tell him how happy she was.

The Doctor released her gently, kissing her forehead lightly, and then bounced away, happily babbling.

"Right, then! Off we go, back home, time to celebrate, what do you think?" he asked, grinning at his family.

Rose chuckled. "Sounds good, love. Tony, are you coming with us?"

"Oh, please, please, please, please, please, Uncle Tony? Please come with us?" Sarah begged, grabbing Tony's hand with both of her own and gazing up at him with pleading eyes. Emma had to fight down a snort at her sister's antics and expression. Just then, Sarah looked far more like a puppy than like the kitten Emma often called her. She also looked a lot like their father did whenever he was trying to con their mother into something. _It'd be interesting to try and find out whether those overdone puppy eyes are an inherited trait or a learned one_, she mused.

Tony grinned down at his little niece and reached up to ruffle her blonde hair. "Sure, I don't have anywhere else to be."

"Yay!" Sarah cried out in joy, and Emma just shook her head, sharing a look of amusement with her parents.

_"Was I ever that hyper?" _she asked her mother silently.

_"No, you had your own little quirks," _Rose replied, grinning.

"Right, then, now that that's settled, Tony, did you drive down?" the Doctor asked.

"Yep."

"So, we'll meet you at the house in a few minutes then. Allons-y!"

"Wait, Dad, can I ride with Tony?" Mick asked, looking from Tony to his parents with a hopeful expression.

"As long as it's okay with him," the Doctor replied, and looked up to meet Tony's eyes.

Tony shrugged. "Sure."

"Great," Mick said happily.

With the transportation arrangements thus settled, the Tyler family headed off to the parking lot to return home, eager to leave in the TARDIS for an adventure.

0-0-0-0-0

Emma rushed up the stairs at top speed to drop off her skating things in her room before racing down to the basement to meet the rest of the family in the TARDIS. As she scampered in the doors and shut them behind her, her Dad greeted her with a grin.

"So, Emma, where do you want to go?" he asked.

She thought a moment, ignoring Sarah's insistent tug on her mind. She knew her sister would just beg her to pick Disney World, and while that planet was fun, Emma wasn't really in the mood for it today.

"How about a trip to the crystal waterfalls on Kelaria Prime?" she suggested finally.

"Brilliant!" the Doctor said happily, and Emma registered Sarah's slight pout in the back of her head. A second later, though, all thoughts of her sister flew out of her head when her father gestured at the console and gave Emma a significant look.

"You- I get to drive?" she asked, an incredulous grin spreading across her face.

"Well," he dad drawled, flashing his trademark grin at her. "A reward for a job well done. Seems appropriate."

"Brilliant!" she burst out, and bounded up to the console to begin flipping switches. She quickly danced around the console, carefully and delightedly guiding the TARDIS through the Vortex to Kelaria Prime in the thirty-ninth century, before the planet was turned into a tourist trap by the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. She wanted to see the waterfalls at their purest today, without crowds or people trying to sell them overpriced souvenirs. She just wanted to enjoy the scenery. If they wanted food, the TARDIS could always whip up a picnic for them.

She landed the TARDIS with a triumphant "Ha!" and bounded out the doors, leading the way out onto the planet. She stopped short a second later as she took in the sight of the bustling tourist resort before her, and groaned. "Bloody hell," she complained, feeling her mother's smothered amusement. "Wrong century."

"So, I guess this means you have to stop teasing Dad every time he lands in the wrong place or time, huh Em?" Mick teased her, smirking.

Emma rolled her eyes at her brother, then looked up to meet her father's eyes. "Not a chance," she said deliberately, making her Mum laugh. "Well, we're here now, so we might as well enjoy it. Come on then, we have a resort to explore. Allons-y!"

0-0-0-0-0

**Wow, I can't believe I actually finished this! It's been so much fun, and I want to thank all of you for reading and reviewing. Please feel free to drop me a last comment or two on this, I really appreciate hearing from you all.**

**I also want to thank Rosamond for her help with this story. Without her, I'd still be stuck in chapter two. And eight. And eighteen. You get the picture. :)**

**I'm going to leave the prequel/sequel poll up on my profile for another couple of days if you'd like to go vote, but the general consensus seems to be that you'd prefer to see the sequel, and the Muse agrees with you. If you were hoping for the prequel, however, do not despair, as I still plan to write it eventually. Anyway, keep an eye out for the next installment, entitled "Define Impossible," which I should start posting in the next couple of weeks once I get my notes together. In the meantime, I have a brief teaser for you.**

** "Things that are impossible: Skiing through a revolving door, wrapping your hand around your elbow and making your fingers meet, and Captain Jack Harkness. Things that are not impossible: The Doctor eating a banana, running into a Dalek, and, apparently, crossing the Void."**

**Thanks again for reading, and as always, please review!**


	19. Author's Note

Sorry, not an extra chapter, just a quick author's note. I wanted to let you all know that I have started posting Define Impossible. The prologue is up now, with more to come soon. If you'd like to read it (and I hope that you will), you can find it on my profile.

Surprised I got it up so soon? Yeah, so am I.


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